


Promises To Keep

by Prettie_Parker



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, Lost Love, Secrets, Surviving the war, broken souls, looking for comfort, lost souls - Freeform, promises to keep
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-05-25 00:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14965370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prettie_Parker/pseuds/Prettie_Parker
Summary: You fiddle idly with the ring on your finger. You still haven’t had the heart to take it off for good. You’re his wife. Just because he’s buried in the mud somewhere doesn’t change that. And you aren't alone. You aren't the only one with promises to keep, trying to carry on after the war has taken away everything you love.You and Tommy Shelby have promises to keep. Just two broken, lost souls seeking a little comfort from all the heartache and hardship of the world.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s a tired old brick building. The kind the world forgot about a long time ago. So covered in soot from the chimney’s and nearby factories that the red hues of the bricks has turned a dusty redish brown, like a blood stain left untreated for far too long.

The outside stairwells are all covered in rusting yellow brass, the walkways lined with old frayed rope for laundry to swing and dry from.

But Tommy moves along the inside of the building, slipping through shadows and empty halls.

The interior stairwell made of beautifully curved and carved wood that has ago chipped away and left straggly like withered bones, the walls covered in white tiles that have since turned yellow with stain, leading him to a long dimly light hall of faded blue.

He moves steadily down the passage, hands in his jacket pockets, eyes cast down low beneath his peaky cap.

The hallway is empty except for him, but a suddenly creak emerges from the silence as he reaches his destination.

Tommy’s eye’s shoot to the sound, a woman – a housewife, peaking out through the crack of her door to spy. It only takes a glance from his cold sharp eyes for his message to deliver and her door to quickly shut.

As everyone in Small Heath knows… It isn’t smart to look at Thomas Shelby the wrong way.

His mission now uninterrupted, Tommy moves close to the door. An old rickety thing with a stained window up top and a brass number nine nailed onto the front of the door.

He raises his knuckles and knocks once. Holds his breath for the beat of two and knocks once more. It’s late and he knows she’ll need to be certain it’s him.

The sound of heels clicking against wooden floorboard fill’s his ears after a long heartbeat, muffled behind the closed door.

Then it opens, slowly the faint glow from inside showers his face as Tommy glances up from beneath his cap to meet her eyes and quickly slips inside with mutual understanding.

Before the door pulls shut, the latch clicks, and the hall of the building is suddenly bathed in near darkness once again.

* * *

You watch Polly roll her eyes as Tommy moves through the betting shopping, slipping past the crowded room as he adjusted his cap and heads out the front.

“He’s up to something. Thinks I don’t notice, but he’s not as clever as he’d like to think.” Polly says under her breath.

You glance up at her from the pile of coins your counting, unsure if she’s talking to you or herself. But all confusion is quickly cleared as she glances your way and continues.

“Sneaking around all day, gone until late into the night. He forgets who ran this business for the last four years. I’d think he got himself a girl if he actually smiled once in awhile. No, he’s up to somethin’ and surely wasting all his money on whores and booze.” She’s flustered, irritated, you can see it in the fire of her eyes as they drift back out to the door Tommy just escaped from.

It’s anger on her breath, but you know her well enough to know underneath it all is concern.  After the war no one came back the same. Least of all Tommy.

You finish your stack, scribble down the tally, and move onto the next. That’s what you do here at the betting shop. Count the bets, count the winnings make sure everything adds up.

You were always good with numbers in school. You enjoyed the logical predictability of them. And you appreciate the job. After the war broke out and all the men went away, Polly and Ada took over the business.  

As the wife of Tommy’s closest childhood pal - Will, the Shelby’s had known you for years. First as Will’s girlfriend who would tag along with him, Tommy and Freddie. Then as Will’s wife just before he left for the war.

Polly hired you on shortly after the men left. Just a few days a week at first, but after tragedy stuck and you lost everything, she kept you on daily. Polly said she needed the extra help, but secretly you knew after losing Will she wanted to keep an eye on you.

Killed in action, the letter said. But you had heard Arthur and John talk about Will at the battle of Somme, talk of an explosion that buried nearly all the tunnelers. He never came home. That was the hardest part. You never got the say goodbye.

The only man you ever loved. You had met William in grade school. He stood up for you when a boy made fun of the holes in your jacket and the knots in your hair as if his shoes didn’t have holes of their own.

William grew up poor on Watery Lane with The Shelby’s and Thorn’s. Bare feet street kids who were as tough and mean as an unchained guard dog.

But Will was sweet on you, for reasons you still don’t entirely understand. He took it upon himself to look out for you and as you grew, that friendship easily transformed into love.

Your mother died when you were young of cholera, your father a laborer who was often out of work and had little time or interest in raisin a child on his own. Will was your everything…

Until he was gone.

You had been inconsolable. Refusing to eat or get out of bed, and Polly and Ada had looked after you. More family to you than your own kin.

But as the months passed and a year nearly slipped away, you slowly pulled your life back together. But you learned things, things only loss and grief can teach you…

That some wounds never heal. That you can still go on living with a hole in your heart. That the world doesn’t stop just because yours came crashing down around you. You take everything one day at a time.

Some days are better than others. But you don’t think on the future, now that your dreams have turned to dust. You hold onto what you still have and try to carry on.

“He hasn’t told you anything?” Polly pipes up again, glancing your way as she flips through the betting slips for the day.

You nearly crack a smile with the question.

“Course’, the man’s a regular chatter box, I tell yeah. I can hardly git him to shut up. I’m tellin’ yeah Pol, after a long day’s work all I want is some peace and quiet on my walk home, but yeah know Tommy, can’t seem to shut him up.” You answer, sarcasm thick on your breath as you shoot her a playful sideways glance.

You don’t miss the devilish grin that spreads across Polly face with your joke as she sparks a match and draws it to the cigarette at her lip.

“Most days he doesn’t say more than a few words. Makes sure I get home safe. Checks the building, the windows, the locks.” You answer her truthfully. When Tommy came back he was a changed man.

Completely different from the lad you grew up with, not that you were close before the war, but still, anyone could see the difference. And that bothered you almost as much as the fact that he wouldn’t leave you alone.

Everywhere you turned he was checking up on you, making sure you had enough food in the apartment, insisting on walking you home from work.

You hated it. You thought it was his way of controlling things. You didn’t want Tommy with his broken eyes and razor sewn cap, you wanted your Will.

But then you came to realize Tommy had made Will a promise back in France to look after you if he didn’t make it home. Tommy couldn’t bring his best pal home, but he could look after his widow, make sure she was safe and had the necessities Will would have taken care of.

Knowing he was honoring his friend, warmed your heart in a different way for Tommy Shelby. And made you realize you had an allie in your grief. You weren’t the only one missing Will.

“He cares about you.” Polly notes, wrapping the stack of betting slips and moving to the stack of pounds.

“He misses Will.” You correct her.

Your breath heavy with a loss you’ve come to believe will never fully leave your heart as you fiddle idly with the ring on your finger.

You still haven’t had the heart to take it off for good. You’re his wife. Just because he’s buried in the mud somewhere doesn’t change that.

Polly turns to you this time, her work on hold for the moment as her lips smile, but her eyes grow heavy.

“We all miss him, dear. But at least he left us you.” She says, reaching softly for your cheek with a mother’s touch.

That’s all you can say. Anything more would be too much. Nearly a year later and it’s still too much.

Polly turns back to counting the stack as you do the same. Your heart a little heavier than at the start of this conversation, but you’ve grown accustom to the weight of it.

You push all thoughts of Will from your mind. Sometimes it’s all you can do to not feel crushed under the weight of it and begin counting your slack again. The rhythm of the numbers distracting your mind and your heart.

“I tell yeah though, that boy is up to somethin’.” Polly adds, the glint of her eyes darting to you briefly as if she knows it all and what she doesn’t she’s damn and determined to find out.

* * *

 

You look at the clock by your bedside. Watch the old brass hands as it ticks the seconds away – tick, tick, tick.

A sound in the distance catches your ear as your face turns to the front door of your apartment. You gaze at it as if it holds the key.

Your ears perked as the old tell-tailed sound fills them. The clicking of shoes against the old wooden floors of the hall.

He’s coming…

The first time it happens you blame it on the whiskey and a loneliness that’s been building inside you for far too long.  

After a long day at the betting shop and raking in a sizable loot, you headed over to the Garrison with the rest of the Shelby’s.

It wasn’t a nightly affair, but a frequent occurrence none the less. They treated you like family now that you have none and for that you were grateful.

Blame it on the whiskey they say, and you understand why. One too many glasses of that amber colored liquor and you were giggling like a school girl alongside Polly, swaying on your feet.

Tommy lets you lean against his side, his arm around your shoulder most of the walk home so you didn’t twist your ankle wobbling along the cobblestone in your heels in the dark.

You got it in your mind that night that Tommy needed a woman, bout time he settled down. Well it wasn’t quite your idea exactly, but when Polly brought it up, it sounded like a right idea to you.

Luckily Tommy had had enough whiskey to smooth out his edges, or he would have shut you up right quick. But instead he lets you carry on most of the way. Offering up an occasional, “uh-huh” and “hmmm” past the pull of his cigarette.

Feigning interest you know he didn’t really have. Tommy wanted no one since he came home from the war. Small Heath’s most notorious flirt in his youth and devoted fella to Greta.

Everyone thought he’d be back to chasing tail once he got home, but Tommy showed no interest in games of that kind anymore. Damn shame far as the women of Small Heath were concerned.

You get back to your apartment easy enough, slow and steady. No one dare mess with you when Tommy’s your shadow.

But the thought hasn’t lost its amusement as he leads you into your tiny apartment. The one you and Will rented out together right after you married.

Right after he enlisted. A month before he shipped out. The last place you ever shared a bed. Your first home. You couldn’t part with it even when he didn’t make it back.

But you don’t think of that as the whiskey swims through your veins that night.  Tommy moves to the wood burning stove to start a fire and gain some heat to the room for you before he leaves.

You don’t feel very drunk, but you realize you might have had more than you think as you move to give Tommy a hand and nearly trip over something on the floor.

Tommy’s reflexes are quick thanks to the war, as his arms slip around your waist to stop your fall, pulling you back up to him and on your feet.

“Easy Addy.” He cautions on a low breath.

“Let’s get yeah to bed, eh?” He says, but you don’t listen and you don’t budge as Tommy tries to take a step. Instead you gaze up at him with an easy smile admiring the softer side of Tommy.

“See, you’re not so tough and brute all the time. You can be soft too, Tommy Shelby.” You tell him as your hands find their way around his neck.

After months of having him nearly your shadow mixed with the hearty amber liquor, it doesn’t feel strange wrapping your arms around him. It almost feels familiar, like a pair of close old friends you never really were.

“Think you’re the only one who thinks so.” Tommy nearly laughs as he manages to get you to take a step toward the bed before you force him to halt again.

Pulling the cap off head and tossing it to the side, you run your fingers through the length of his hair on top, brushing it off to the side as you smile up at your work.

“You’d make some girl a fine husband. Practically respectable if you ask me.” You tell him as your hand slips from his hair and runs softly down the side of his face to lock with the other at the back of his neck.

Admiring your work, you miss the shift in his eyes as he gazes down at you, the shift in the air of the room from all your touching and hanging on him, but you feel it when Tommy pulls you closer.

Then suddenly he’s kissing you and your kissing him back, the innocence of your arms around him suddenly in question. None of it’s clear in your mind and for once in a very long time you don’t need things to be clear.

Tommy’s arms tighten around you, pulling you into the curve of his body as you both stumble clumsily back across the room, humming with whiskey - over-served from the Garrison.

His mouth is on fire and you can’t tell if it’s burning you alive or bringing you back to life, but you haven’t been kissed or touched with desire in over four years, nearly five.

With just a taste of it your body feels a hunger you’ve nearly forgotten, a hunger to be touched and caressed, to be desired. Like a school girl all over again, only you’ve had enough experience to remember what you’ve been missing.

And Tommy seems to hold the same frantic need as his tongue sneaks past the seam of your lips, tasting and exploring the flavor of your mouth as if he’s never tasted anything sweeter.

Your heart is pounding so hard in your chest you can hear it thumping in your ears as your lower back bumps into your small kitchen table.

You barely feel it, the edge poking into your lower back as you’re held there against it by his body, lost in the hold of Tommy’s grip and the wanting way his mouth moves against yours – taking anything he can get and pushing for more.

You knew you were lonely, all those cold quiet nights alone, year after year, but you had no idea how badly until this moment. As you surrender to Tommy’s advances completely.

Your body craving the way his hands cup and caress your soft curves, the assault of his mouth on your lonely lips.

Your palms roam him, needing to feel the shape of a man beneath them, the heat of his body, and the musky rich scent of him filling your lungs. Needing assurances this isn’t a dream, you aren’t alone, someone is really here.

Tommy leads you blindly, your eyes only slipping open as his lips pull away. Lashes fluttering over your hooded eyes, you find him and the look in his piercing blues sends your belly coiling tight and your breath halting at your lips for a brief moment.

A man hasn’t looked at you with such hunger and desire in so long you nearly forgotten the way it can make every sense inside your body come alive and set alight.

Make you forget everything in that moment but him and the hypnotic power of his stare – dark, hungry, and drunk off you. Like a disease, it fills your veins with the same urgency.

It’s only the flutter of movement that has the power to pull you from his powerful stare. You glance down to see Tommy’s making quick work of his trousers as his eye stare unrelentingly upon you.

Your heart suddenly pounds harder if that’s possible, as you watch his deft fingers tug at the buttons on his wool pants. The same fingers that were setting fires against the curve of your hips and breasts just moments ago.

Maybe with a moment of clarity, a moment of thought you would have realized what a mistake this is, but you don’t give it a moment, as fear and excitement sweep through your veins, moving you to act as quickly as him, as you gather up your skirt, reaching for your knickers beneath.

The silky fabric barely slips past your ankles when Tommy’s gripping insistently at your cheek, pulling you back to him and into a desperate kiss. The heat of his mouth, the taste of his lips, it’s frantic against yours as if he has to have you as he devours the taste of you in his mouth.

Your hands grip tightly at the muscles that contour his shoulders as Tommy lifts you like your weightless, unceremoniously hoisting you onto the table.

It’s a frantic game of push and pull that plays to the rapid rhythm of your pounding hearts, as if every second can’t be wasted as you tug your skirt up around your waist and Tommy spreads your legs, slipping between them.

No thought or time taken to remove the rest of your garments as Tommy grabs at the back of your stocking covered thighs, his hands rough and callused as he wraps your legs around him, his hardness and the heat of his skin pressing against you.

Your hands are roaming up the back of his neck, past the stiff collar of his pressed shirt, his short-cropped hair pricking at your fingertips, when he grabs your ass and with a single thrust Tommy plunges inside you.

You gasp into his mouth, your nails biting crescent moons deep into his skin in retribution. It’s been so long and this unfolded so fast, you’re already wet for him, but not entirely ready as your body instantly tenses tightly around him.

You’d be embarrassed by how warm and silky you were for him this quick if the heat of his ragged breath on your ear didn’t tell you how much he loves it.

“Fuck. You feel good.” Tommy curses, breath heaving as he peppers your neck with kisses, the stubble of his face burning against your skin as he rocks slowly into the warmth of you.

Letting your body adjust to the feel of him as if this were your first time all over again. But it’s not your first time, and you feel the need for more quickly come back to life within you.

Your body speaking needs of its own as you rock against him, meeting the gentle sway of Tommy’s shallow thrusts, creating delicious fiction between the dance of your bodies, urging him for more.

Without words, Tommy understands as his grip finds the curve of your hip - the fabric of your skirt bunched around it, his other hand grabs at the back of your thigh as he begins to push deeper with every snap of his hips, making you rapidly flush and gasp against him.

You grip Tommy tight, losing yourself in the moment. You hear your table moan in protest beneath you, too old and weak for the force Tommy’s giving it, but you can’t bring yourself to care if the legs fall out under you as Tommy takes you higher.  

Your senses on fire, your mind focused on the feel of only him and the way you move together, the fullness of Tommy inside you, all around you.

His hips snap quickly against the sensitive bundle of nerves between your thighs, sending jolts of electricity spearing through your body as he rubs against the delicate spot over and over again in a way that sends you quickly to the brink of ecstasy.

Your arms wrapped desperately around his neck and back, you claw at Tommy for perch as you open your legs wider to him, your feet digging into his firm ass as you draw him closer with every thrust, needing more of him, all of him, everything he can give you.

Your body suddenly greedy and frantic for release from someone other than yourself for the first time in years. Clinging to him tighter as Tommy pushes deep within you, hitting that hidden weak spot that makes your toes curl and your breath gasp sharply as ecstasy rushes through you, making you lose sight of everything but him and this moment.

And Tommy seems to understand by the pitch of your voice, the shortness of your breath.

“Right there?” Tommy’s strangled hoarse breath asks, as he grips the back of your thigh higher against his hip, yanking you to the edge of the table for a better angle to please you.

Your butt rides the edge of that old wooden table as Tommy crushes you against him, his hips snapping faster, deeper. Hitting that sensitive spot buried deep within you that leaves your breath gasping sharply in his ear as he moves swiftly in and out again.

No tenderness, no restraint, and you know you can’t hold on much longer. It’s like teetering over the edge of a cliff, staring boldly down into the abyss, knowing what awaits you is heaven.

“Yes,” Your gasps out desperately, your voice fraying at the edges like your body.

Encouraging him on as your belly coils, thighs clench, your breath heavy and frantic as you climb higher and higher toward heaven. You cling to Tommy as if you can’t get close enough, your senses are on fire as he buries himself within you, thrusting harder.

Intoxicating pleasure flooding through your veins, building and mounting, until there’s so much pressure it’s almost more than you can bear as you begins to lose all sense and fall off the edge.

Tommy’s breath hits hard and frantic against your neck, and like the spark of a match, all it takes is one more deep thrust, filling you completely and suddenly you’re coming undone.

Your head falls back as a cry escapes you, the world exploding all around. The kind of delirious ecstasy you’ve been deprived of for far too long races like pulsating fire through your veins, crashing over you in waves.

Desperate sighs rips from your lips as your cling to him, your hips rock frantically, erratically against Tommy as you clench and spasm around him, trying to chase the greatest high you’ve had in years for everything it’s worth.

You feel Tommy’s fingers dig deep into the flesh on the back of your thigh, with enough force that it will surely leave marks in the morning.

His breath grunts deep, his hips losing their rhythm as he shutters and quakes against your body. Obscenities falling hot and wet from his desperate lips against the curve of your neck as he releases inside you.

You hold onto each other, a tangled knot of heavy breathes and tired limbs as ecstasy races through your veins and then slowly wanes away.

Tommy’s breath feels heavy against your neck, the sweat glistening on his face feels slick on your equally dewy skin.

When Tommy finally moves, he pulls out slowly, and it’s a strange sort of emptiness that takes his place.

Your legs are trembling as he slowly steps back from the cradle of your thighs and sets them back down on the hardwood floor, your table angerly protesting at the both of you.

You feel the absence of him between the ache your thighs. But it’s more than that, more than him…

It’s what you’ve done and the reality of it as it settles in around you.

Your legs feel unsteady as you brace your hand on the tables edge and reach down to slowly pull your knickers back up your legs.

Smoothing your skirt back down into place, you’re struck with the deepest sense of betrayal. You’ve never been with another man.

Doesn’t matter that Will’s been dead almost a year, gone even longer, you can’t help but feel like you betrayed him in the deepest way, and with his best friend no less.

Tommy Shelby, that you’ve known since you were kids, but only because you hung on Will’s arm.

Will’s lying buried feet beneath the earth somewhere, food for mealworms and God only knows what, and you just fucked his best pal against the table you shared your last meal together as husband and wife at.

You chance a glance up to find Tommy watching you carefully as he fastens the last buttons of his trousers and tucks his shirt.

He takes in the sight of you, a sadness washing over the sharp features of his face.

You don’t realize you’re crying until he reaches out, his thumb wiping tenderly at the streak running down your cheek. Only then do you notice how flushed and damp your cheeks feel.

You can’t speak as you stare back into his deep broken blue eyes that look as guilty as you feel and far more vulnerable than you ever remember seeing before. You don’t know what to say. What could you possibly say in a moment like this?

Tommy coughs suddenly as if his throats grown much too tight as he quickly turns away from you. Adjusting the cap back on his head as his gaze lingers on the floor.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, his voice deep and heavy even as his face hangs low, unable to meet yours as if the sight of you right now is just too damn hard.

You linger there in the room, wiping silently at your cheeks, lost in an awkward moment you both don’t know how to fix, before he snatches up his jacket and turns for the door. Not another word between you.

Tommy kept his distance from you after that. Not physically, of course. He made a promise to Will somewhere down in that mud and he had every intention of keeping it.

Waiting for you every morning to walk you to work with a cigarette hanging from his lip, smoke billowing around his face as his hands rest shoved in the pockets of waistcoat.

Cap sitting lower over his eyes as he checked his pocket watch, waiting to walk you home every night when the day was done.

Making sure things worked around the apartment, replacing them if they didn’t. Making sure you were safe and no one dared give you a hard time about nothin’ without having to answer to Thomas Shelby.

But he wouldn’t speak to you unless he absolutely had to, and only about pertinent matters, never what happened.

He could hardly look at you and never in the eye. If your gazes happen upon each other, Tommy was always the first to look away.

You hated yourself back then. More than you can ever recall hating yourself before.

And not just because of what you did, disgracing the honor of your dead husband, but because a part of you wanted to do it again. And as the days went by, your hunger for Tommy grew.

It wasn’t even Tommy himself, just getting lost in someone’s arm. Feeling wanted, desired, and connected. The cold space in your bed seeming to echo louder than ever once you had a taste of what it was like not to be alone.

It’s you who kisses him the second time around, you start the fire. And to his honor, Tommy tried his best not to reciprocate, but he is just a man, and one you’ve learned is as lonely and broken as you are from the war.

The second time you don’t cry when it’s done. And by the third time, you both don’t even bother pretending it won’t happen again.

It becomes a simple arrangement. Kept secret to avoid the scandal and disgrace of your actions. Just comfort, you remind yourself when you slip under the currents of his desire, let the heat of his ocean take you away.

Two broken, lost souls seeking a little comfort, a little release from all the heartache and hardship of the world. It doesn’t mean anything else.

Will can still be everything. Your whole heart and Tommy isn’t looking to take his place any more than you want him to.

Just two broken, lost souls…

It’s the old familiar knock on the door that pulls you from your reverie. One, then hold for a beat, then the second. So you know it’s him. As if anyone else would be at your door at this hour.

You rise from the chair at your kitchen table. Fingers fiddling with the ring on your left hand. The one Will placed there and promised to love you forever.

With a heavy breath, you clasp it and pull it off. Setting it carefully in an empty porcelain tea cup on the table. This is the only time you take it off.

But you can’t wear it with him. You can’t draw Tommy into your arms, into your body, into your bed, and still wear Will’s ring.  

With one last glance at that simple yet beautiful reminder of your husband, you let go of the past and all of its broken promises for just a little while, and move for the door.


	2. Promises To Keep || Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say THANK YOU to everyone for all the support on this story. All of you are amazing! As always kudos and comments are greatly appreciated and make my day.

Two lonely, lost souls in need of a little comfort…

You remind yourself as your head digs deep into the old feather tick pillow on your bed, as your back arches up like a bow pulled tight. Your muscles trembling, quivering as you gasp out his name like you’re lost in the throes of a delirious fever. A delirious fever that’s left you driven mad and burning alive by the stroke of his tongue.

The sight of Tommy’s face buried deep between your trembling thighs leaves you putty in his hands – or mouth, depending on the angle. Your hand fisting wildly at the longer strands of his hair as his mouth leaves you senseless. 

You like to watch as he works, but as his dangerous blue eyes glance up to catch yours, you’re almost certain he likes it even more, as he hums against you as if he’s never tasted anything sweeter. Tongue stroking and delving, lips sucking and kissing your sensitive flesh until your breath is reduced to nothing more than desperate gasps.

“I can’t, Tommy I can’t.” You beg, trying to push his head back as he grips your thighs tighter and pulls you closer to his waiting mouth. 

This, you’ve learned, is the other way Tommy needs to feel like he’s taking care of you. Somewhere in the twisted muck and mud of broken hearts and shattered dreams, Tommy’s made this part of the promise. And not just leaving you taken care of, but leave you completely sated and spent. 

He feeds off pushing you further, seeing just how much pleasure your body can take before you beg him to stop. Further than anything you tried with Will. You’ve learned it’s a release for Tommy. One of the many ill-equipped ways he copes since the war. Some internal thrill he gets off of seeing how many times he can make you cum in a single night, how high he can take you. 

He gets drunk off it, like the Garrison’s whiskey. Like a soldier on a mission, he can’t stop until he feels his work is done. At first you thought he did it to honor Will in some twisted way, but you see now it’s more than that. This is all about Tommy, needing to be the best, the best you’ve ever had.

He strokes you again, his tongue flat as it moves slowly at first, teasing against your desperate pleas, before he starts to lick faster against your sensitive bud. Your body jolts with heat as your thighs clench. It’s too much, you’re too sensitive, he’s already pushed you over the edge too many times tonight.

“Tommy,” You call for him more insistently this time, tugging at his hair. Only letting up the grip of your thighs when he relents. Giving your inner thigh a playful nip, you feel his smug smile against your tender flesh as you admit defeat.

His mouth wet and breath heavy as it drags slowly up your naked body. Every nerve peaking and standing on edge to the brush of his soft wet lips, the stroke of his slick tongue that’s still eager to taste you. As he pays careful attention to all the sensitive places that make you shiver and moan.

Reaching your face, Tommy leans over you, suspended by the hard lean muscle of his arms as he hovers over your body.

“You wan’ me to stop? Had enough, eh?” Tommy teases with a devilish smirk, breath heavy as he gazes down upon you with dark hungry eyes.

He doesn’t smile often, but when he does it makes your belly flutter, and you’re finding you can draw that glimmer of light out of him more and more. Your body was begging to rest a second ago, a moment to breathe, but looking into the hollows of his eyes, the heat and darkness alive within them for you, the silent challenge that shines from the endless blue of them has you suddenly needing something else entirely.

You reach up to touch his face, running your thumb along the sharp line of his cheekbone as your fingertips run along his scalp, his eyes never leaving yours.

“What I wan’ Mr. Shelby, is you inside me.” You confess on a heavy wanton breath, rocking against his hips as they rest in the cradle of your thighs, the feel of him throbbing against you making it undeniable how badly he wants you too.  

Tommy’s eyes practically roll back into his head as they fall closed with the feel of you moving against him, as weak to your touch as you are to his.

“Fuck.” Slips ragged and heavy off his breath as he leans down to steal the breath from your lips, happy to oblige.

It’s just comfort between two lost and broken souls… Until it’s not.

* * *

Until Tommy accidentally spends the night, because you both were so exhausted and spent you fell asleep tangled up in each other and didn’t awaken until sun up… Until he tells you he doesn’t hear the shovels when he’s with you. You ask what that means, but Tommy only stares back at you with those broken blue eyes that now hold tiny slivers of hope as they gaze upon you in the morning light. And in the silence and torture of his eyes, you think you might understand – shovels – tunnels – the war. The parts of him that never came home.

You remember Polly mentioning once in passing that Tommy has fitful nights. She mentioned it briefly early on after he came back. She mentioned it out of concern, but still grieving the loss of your husband, you barely paid it any mind. He isn’t restless beside you though, so you let him stay. 

It’s the least you can do after everything Tommy’s done for you. But you change the side of the bed you sleep on. You take Will’s and give Tommy yours. You tell yourself, it doesn’t mean anything that he’s there come sun up. Just a few more hours in your bed. But you can’t have him lying in Will’s spot, taking his place. That you can’t bear the thought of.

You lay beside each other on your old tick mattress. Skin to skin, the thin quilt atop you, and the slow dying fire in the stove keeping you warm. Tommy’s lips pull at a cigarette, as you silently dig out the dirt from under his fingernails by the light of the oil lamp on your bedside table. Carefully cleaning out the grime and muck from his dirty work the day prior with the edge of your nail, as the heat of his body keeps you warm.

When your satisfied it’s clean enough, you release his hand and roll lazily onto your side, propping yourself up on your elbow as you gaze over at him in the faint yellow light drawing from the oil lamp. Your eyes dragging over his body not covered by the thin quilt, well acquainted with it by now. A year ago, a moment like this would have never crossed your mind. 

You nibble absently on your lower lip as your eyes sweep over his various tattoos that you often wonder about – wonder the meaning behind and how he got them, the tuft of hair at the top his chest you like to play with, his long lean muscles – the way they feel moving and contracting against you, until your eyes settle on the scar just below his shoulder. A jagged ‘V’ sort of looking thing.

You reach out as Tommy takes another long pull of his cigarette, letting your fingers trace faintly over it as his gaze lingers lazily around the ceiling, lost in the heavy haze of afterglow.

“How did you get this one, Tommy?” You ask him quietly. 

This late in the night sound only seems to amplify and carry. And you’re sure your apartment has given off enough noise to shame the devil already tonight. If it were anyone besides Thomas Shelby in your bed there’d be talk, but no one dares mutter his name, not even in hushed tones. 

No, the shame they cast upon you comes solely from the glare of their eyes and sealed lips as you pass by. As if you aren’t a heart broken widow anymore, but a fallen woman tangled in sordid affairs.

Tommy doesn’t move, but his eyes shift down to the touch of your hand as he takes another pull of his cigarette, his free hand having moved to rest leisurely behind his head.

“Gun shot, bullet cut clean through.” He mutters absently as if it’s barely worth mentioning, as if he isn’t reliving a battle scar.

Your fingers trace it a moment longer, wondering what it must have been like to be shot out amongst a sea of dead and dying men, in the trenches, on the battlefield - before you lean over and place your lips gently upon his mark, giving it a tender kiss.

Leaning back ever so, you find Tommy watching your movements as you look him dead in the eye. His gaze narrowing with question, awaiting what your trying to say as your breath lingers and delays.

“I lost everything in the war, Tommy. I just- I need to know… What was it like down there at the Somme… after the explosion?” You finally dare to ask him, knowing you shouldn’t. 

Men didn’t talk about the war and if they did, they didn’t talk about it with women, or sober. But you need to know. Sometimes you awaken at night covered in a cool sweat, dreaming of what you overheard Arthur and John discussing. Your mind conjuring up the worst, of Will being buried alive, covered in miles of dirt and mud. Calling out for you as he’s crushed below.

Tommy’s the only one who was there, down in the tunnels that day. The only one who knows what happened to your Will and you need him to tell you. Even if his answer hurts and does nothing to ease your pain.

Tommy holds your gaze briefly before he turns away and looks back up at the chipped paint ceiling overhead. Pulling slowly at his cigarette as if he doesn’t have a care in the world. Inhaling the smoke deep in his lungs, only to let it dances back out past his perfectly shaped lips. The seconds drag on, but he doesn’t even look at you, it’s as if you said nothing at all.

You decide he’s ignoring you as you slowly lay back down on the pillow, turning away from him as you roll on your opposite side, admitting defeat. Maybe you didn’t share these sort of things after all. Perhaps you over stepped your bounds trying to talk about things that mattered. It’s just comfort and old promises between you after all.

Your gaze finds the time faded photo of you and Will on your bedside. The one from your wedding day, his gift to you. Will with his blonde tousled hair, deep-set blue eyes, his soft full lips spread wide in a grin, your arm laced through his. Your smile was blinding it was so vibrant, the joy in your eyes practically lifted off the film. Polly told ya both not to smile, people don’t smile for pictures she said, but neither of you could have stopped if you tried. 

The image stares back at you like a girl you hardly know anymore. A girl so happy, her future full of promise and love, as your heart pains with the sight of her now and everything you lost since then. Your mind drifts back to the mud. The fucking mud, as you pray silently to yourself he didn’t suffer.

You absently hear Tommy stub out his cigarette from behind you, but you pay it no mind, frustrated with his moods, and perhaps yourself too for thinking you could ask something like that of him. 

When you feel Tommy roll onto his side, moving up against you from behind. You want to shrug him off, tell him you’re not in the mood, but he pulls you tightly against his warm flesh and lean muscle, pinning your arms down to your chest as his hot breath finds the back of your ear.

“You can hardly move.” He whispers quietly on a gravel breath into your ear, his grip tightening around you, until you’re pinned against yourself and him.

Your heart pounds, for a split second you don’t understand what he’s doing, but then his arm releases you, his hand traveling slowly up your body, until it gently covers your eyes. Then the pieces come together as his husky breath fills your ear once again…

“You can’t see a thing, the lantern’s lost. Everything is dark.” He tells you and you realize Tommy is actually answering your question. He’s telling you what it was like down there after the explosion, the only way he thinks he can make you understand.

Your eyes hold closed as you surrender to the experience. Letting him take you, show what it was like to be trapped down there in the mud and earth. Left for dead.

You feel his hand slip over your nose and mouth, not pressing down, just covering as the heat of his breath licks at your ear.

“You can’t hardly breath, too much mud and dirt in the air… You start to think you’re gonna die down there.”

You let yourself feel it as best you can, what it must have been like trapped down deep in the earth, fighting to survive, as you struggle harder to breathe against the hold of his hand. The air feels thick and hard to reach as it struggles against his palm and fingers, hot and moist as you exhale it out quickly against his skin, searching for more that nearly escapes you. 

Your eyes hold closed, your body unmoving as if trapped, as you try to imagine the panic as all the mud and dirt pin you down, darkness all around. Your heart pumps harder as it breaks with the thought. As you let yourself feel just an ounce of what it was like to face your certain death. To be buried alive, trapped. And you fight and dig, but only more dirt and mud await you.

Tommy removes his hand from your nose and mouth as you turn over in the bed to face him. Tears burn at your tired eyes and slip from the edges as you gaze up at Tommy, understanding the broken pieces in his eyes since he came home a little better. A man so different from the one you knew before. 

While you were never close, connected through Will, the change was undeniable. Before the war, Tommy was an incorrigible flirt, he and Will had a laugh that could fill a room – loud and boisterous, and often – And a fire inside him that made him relentless. That fire inside is the only piece that made it back home with him, but now it’s far more calculating and merciless.

You watch a sadness cast shadows across Tommy’s face and dampen at his eyes as you feel his hand find your cheek. The pad of his thumb tenderly wiping at your tears.

“It wasn’t like that for Will. Addy, he died in the explosion. He went quick.” He tries to reassure you.

You want to believe that. Need to believe that. That the explosion took Will in a fiery blast so quickly he never saw it coming. But gazing into Tommy’s tortured deep blue eyes, knowing the man he’s become since that war spit him back out, your heart is pained at the thought of what he went through. How he suffered and nearly died.

Your hand reaches out to touch his face, run along the hollows of his eyes and the pain that’s been planted deep within them.

“But it was for you.” You say, your voice heavy with grief as you gaze into his eyes.  

“I’m glad you fought, Tommy. I’m glad you got out.” The words fall raw and emotion thick as you gaze up at him. Suddenly unable to imagine him not being there. Unable to imagine your life without him.

Tommy stares at you long and hard with those penetrating eyes you swear see through you like windows on a storefront. His gaze pinning you with a strange sort of recognition as a seriousness surfaces in his eyes and his knuckles gently stroke your cheek.

“I’m startin’ to think I am too.” He whispers to you on a low gritty breath.

Those words are dangerous, you both know it as you gaze deeply into one another’s eyes, lying naked, tangled up in each other. What you said, what Tommy reciprocated… that wasn’t talk of comfort or release from two lonely broken souls. That was something loaded and far more incendiary.

Just a breath apart, the tips of your nose faintly touch as you stare into each other eyes for a long moment, truly seeing one another. Both acknowledging this little arrangement isn’t quite what it was at the start. It’s changing and shifting. Blossoming and deepening as something far more dangerous grows out of it.

Gazing up into Tommy’s eyes, skin to skin in the bed you once shared with Will, that old familiar guilt begins worm its way back to the surface. It was easy to push under when you told yourself this was only comfort, but staring into Tommy’s haunting blue eyes the way you are, getting lost in the way he looks back at you, the way it makes your heart beat faster… you can’t help but feel your heart is the one betraying Will now.

You’re the first to break away as the pressure settles in on your chest. You glance at the clock on your bedside table, needing a moment of distance, a moment to breathe.

You glance back over at Tommy and find the calling look gone from his gaze. All that remains is the Tommy who’s warmed your bed and your body for countless nights. The familiarity of this Tommy sooths your guilt. Let’s you steep in your denial a little while longer. Let’s you convince yourself it’s still only comfort, to kill the loneliness for two lost souls.

“We have an hour.” You tell him.

And Tommy knows what that means as a crooked grin curves the corner of his sexy mouth. Devilish glint igniting his eyes as he leans down to steal a kiss before you can even think about protesting. His mouth warm and persistent, his tongue slipping past the seam of your lips to stroke your own, seducing your senses on contact and leaving you weak to his desires. The hunger of his mouth moves steadily to your jaw as he devours it with kisses and nips. 

Your body easily bending to his will, your compliance silently begging for more as Tommy reaches for your arms, and one by one - he draws them over your head, before he locks your wrists tightly in his grip. Holding you captive to his desires. Tommy moves between your legs as you spread them wide to welcome him, settling between the warm flesh of your thighs that only reveal their bounty to him.

You love the way he looks on top of you, all hard lean muscle, contoured and defined from the war, encaging you, to do with as he desires. Those eyes like the devil they’re so enchanting. His warm flesh blanketing you as you rock up against him in eager anticipation of more. He’s made a monster out of you, a greedy hungry thing as you practically beg for more like a child would a sweet.

“So fucking eager.” Tommy whispers huskily, the chuckle that follows vibrating against the heat of your skin, just below your ear as his trail of kisses moves into the curve your neck. 

His other hand teasing the peak of your breast, his thumb dangerously swirling and pinching at your hardened nipple before his soft full lips move down to join it, a moan leaving your lips as you curl into his touch… So much for considering the neighbors.


	3. Promises To Keep || Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is super angst and changes up the game. Hopefully your surprised and didn’t see it coming a mile away. Hopefully you don’t hate Addy after this. These two have been building something between them and that doesn't just stop overnight. 2-3 more chapters left on this little story, then it’s done.
> 
> So I guess it goes without saying, but I’m gonna say it anyway lol…
> 
> Kudos and comments are encouraged and greatly appreciated. It really does make my day to see what you guys think of the story.

You’re putting the kettle on the stove for a bit of afternoon tea for you and Pol when you feel Tommy come up behind you. By yourself in the small kitchen of red brick and mortar, tucked off to the side of the dining room like a little hidden nook. His rough hand slips across your lower back, along the seam of your skirt on approach and settles at the clinch of your waist, the rest of his body coming to rest behind you.

“Thomas,” You whisper harshly to him, scolding him as you try to paw his hand off you. 

Your startled eyes quickly scanning about, looking to see if anyone saw him, but you find it’s only you and Tommy in the kitchen and dining room. Hard to tell from this angle, but you think he might have even closed off the door to the betting shop too, or at the very least drawn the curtain.

The heat of his body entices yours as you glance over your shoulder at him, barely catching his gaze and the darkness gripping within it as Tommy brings his other hand down around the opposite side of your waist, taking ahold of you. You feel his hands grip at you before sliding down to the curve of your hips as his nose brushes teasingly along the slope of your neck, drawing a line down behind your ear.

“Tommy what are you doin’?” You laugh, squirming in the hold of his hands.

 Smile tugging at your lips even as you try to fight it and sound more firm, trying to pull him off you and slip from his grasp before someone sees. You may be alone for the moment, but the Shelby homestead is busy this time of day, surely someone will come in any moment. You’ve managed to keep this little arrangement secret thus far, but with Tommy pawing at you the way he is, if someone came in they’d be very confused by what they saw, but not fooled by any means.

You feel Tommy playfully nip at the back of your neck, his teeth leaving a love bite the wet heat of his tongue quickly soothes. His arms pull you flush against him before you can get away, sending your heart racing and heat flushing your skin with the feel of him against you once again. You’ve already had your fill early this morning, before the dawn breaks tall over the row houses and smoke-filled skies, had your fill most of him last night too, but it never ceases to amaze you the insatiable hunger Tommy has for you. 

No one has caught his eye since he came home. You know, because Arthur and John feel the need to point it out after one too many. Little do they know he’s getting more than his share in your bed almost nightly, but that’s not something you want getting out. Will may be gone, but he’s still yours. And there’s a part of you that’s afraid if you become Tommy’s then the last piece of Will disappears too. You don’t know what’s happening between you and Tommy, but neither of you seem eager to claim it.

“Havin’ a break.” Tommy tells you, trying to sound oblivious of his advances as his warm breath softens the muscles of your neck, his lips peppering you with kisses between words, the lower growl he’s making against your skin only leaving you wanting more of his soft full lips.

“You don’ believe in breaks.” You throw back at him cheekily as his hands roam the expanse of your hips, one slipping down around your outer thigh, slowly tugging the side of your skirt up in his pursuit.

“Go upstairs with me.” Tommy boldly proposes, his breath so husky and deep it sends shivers down your spine. Your thighs clench as Tommy tugs your skirt up high enough to slip his hand under the seam of it.

“Have ya gone mad? The bettin’ shop is full today. Your whole family’s out there. They’ll know what we’re up to if we go upstairs.” You manage to protest in spite of your flushing cheeks, trying to push his hand out from under your skirt, but to no avail as he grips your thigh tighter, holding you flush against him.

“Tell me to stop.” Tommy whispers to you on a low dangerous breath, daring you to deny you want this as his hand slips along your thigh underneath your skirt, brushing the silk knickers he bought you, testing your limits. 

Both knowing someone could walk in any moment. A ragged breath escapes you as your eyes suddenly slip closed, sparks of fire ignite between your legs as his fingers slowly inch closer to your sweet spot.

“Tommy,” Your wanton breath begs, and you not sure if your begging for more or begging him to stop as the back of your head falls against his shoulder. 

Your eyes shoot open with the sound of a creak, darting frantically to the entry of the kitchen, awaiting someone to come in and find you both in such a compromising position, but nothing happens.  The possibility of getting caught only heightens the moment and builds the excitement and fear running through you. And by the twitch of his fingers, you can sense it’s that same danger that’s driving Tommy on too.

“I have an errand to run. Come for a drive with me.” Tommy insists, his breath growing deeper and heavier as his knuckles finally stoke slowly against the silky spot where you’re aching for his touch the most. 

You inhale sharply, shivering against him before a shuttered sigh slips off your lips that you quickly try to stifle. It always amazes you the way his deft fingers, so callused and cruel toward others, can feel so soft when against you.

Setting you on fire, your eyes fall involuntarily closed with the slow teasing rhythm of his touch. Soft and skilled, his knuckles run up and down along your sensitive skin leaving your mind nearly mad and weak to his desires as the silk of your knickers grow wet as you melt against his touch. Your heart thumps heavy in your chest, torn over whether to push his hand away or grind down against his palm as your hunger for Tommy grows steadily stronger and more greedy within you.

It’s the sound of a sudden scream in the front room that bursts the bubble and brings you both back to your senses. In an instant his hand is gone as your eyes shoot open and Tommy is pulling away from you. Reaching for the gun in his holster, he steps in front you, pushing you behind him protectively as he moves steadily back through the dining room and toward the doors to the betting shop. Tommy checks to make sure his gun is fully loaded, before he draws it out in front of him.

As you enter the betting shop you find everyone is frozen, all eyes on the open front door. Tommy moves ahead of you, gun raised as Polly’s gaze meet yours from across the room. Hand covering her mouth like she’s trying to soften the sound of a scream or a gasp, as tears hold heavy in her eyes. Your heart is pounding hard in your chest as you realize everyone is scared still. You don’t know what’s going on, you’ve never seen anything like this, confusion thick in the air. Your thoughts race, should you run - Hide? 

No one else is moving to scurry as you linger indecisively, unsure what move to make next, but it’s the sight of Tommy stopping abruptly that catches your eye, you nearly run into the back of him as your gaze breaks from Pol. You turn to him, the startled look on his face igniting a new level of fear inside you as the gun wavers in his hand before his arm falls limply to his side. Light bursts in through the open doorway as you turn to face it, at high noon it’s like the gates of heaven shining down. There’s a man standing there, his size and stature give it away, but as you search your eyes find any sign of a gun.

It takes you a moment, a heartbeat, for your mind to catch up with a reality too big to comprehend as you take in the sight of him and the air instantly strips from your lungs completely. Your heart suddenly pounds harder than you can ever remember feeling it move inside your chest as you nearly gasp in fright as if you’ve seen a ghost, because you have. You grab desperately at the old wooden chair behind you, suddenly so thankful it’s there to steady you or surely your legs would have given out as tears burn rapidly in your eyes and blur your vision.

“I don’ understand… Is this- Is this real?” The words stumble past your lips in shock. 

The desperate plea of a voice hardly able to speak. Your breath so distant it’s as if it came from another person else entirely. You shake your head numbly in disbelief as Polly comes to stand beside you, resting a gentle hand on your arm as you turn to her in shocked disbelief.

“Yes dear, I believe it is.” She reassures you, tears glistening in her eyes as a smile stretches wide on her face.

Your gaze turns back to the door unable to believe what you’re seeing until you hear finally his voice.

“Hi Addy.” He says simply, voice low and quiet like he used to when it was just the two of you, alone in a quiet moment. That voice, your heart screams! That voice you’d know from the darkest pits of hell or the highest mountain peaks. That voice you’d know anywhere, because it was your constant, even when you had nothing else. The voice you thought you’d never hear again.

Your chest starts heaving as you gasp out sharply, unable to hold it inside you a second longer. Tears run violently down your face as you suddenly bolt toward him as fast as you can move across the room. Your missing piece. Your broken heart. The love of your life…  _Your husband_.

You jump into his arms as they open to greet you. No thought of modesty or decency as you wrap your arms and legs around him, knocking him back a few steps from the force of you as you wrap yourself desperately tight around him. Sobbing and shaking as you bury your face into his neck, needing to feel his skin against yours. 

Your trembling hands running frantically over him, up his cropped head and along the longer strands up top, reminding yourself of the feel of his hair in your hands. You bury your nose against his neck as you tenderly nuzzle his skin, breathing him in as deeply as you can, knowing you thought you never smell him again. Hardly able to believe this is real. He is real. When you never thought you’d be able to see him again.

“They said you were dead… They told me you were dead…” You frantically repeat the only thought you can form as you sob desperately against him. 

Your body shaking with the wave of emotion crashing over you as you cling to him as tightly as you can, terrified he’ll disappear if you don’t. Terrified he’ll slip through your fingers, that this’ll all just be a dream and you’ll have to wake up to him gone all over again.

“It’s a’right. I’m home, baby…” Will tells you. His arms gripping you just as tight as he kisses the side of your face, your tears staining his lips as he whispers softly in your ear. “I’m home.”

* * *

 

You’re barely through the door before he’s on you, his arms encircling your waist, dragging you against him before his hands are everywhere else. Stumbling across the small one room apartment. Your feet tangled in a dance headed straight for the bed that you easily tumble upon, pinned beneath him. Will’s kiss is heavy and desperate upon your mouth and neck as he paws and strips at the layers of clothing that separate you.

“Slow down Will,” you laugh against his lips. “It’s been so long. Can’t we- can’t we take it slow?” You ask between the press of his full lips. 

Your heart pounding with a nervousness that’s hard for you to define. You were in shock when you saw him, in ways you can’ even describe, but as the adrenaline and disbelief wore off your mind begins to flood with a million things. 

You know him, better than anyone, and yet after all this time, Will nearly feels like a stranger pushing against you. With a limp to his right leg, blonde hair shaven short on the sides – slicked back on top in a way he’s never worn before, he’s your Will, but he’s not. And he still hasn’t explained yet how’s he’s back from the dead.

But Will isn’t deterred or slowing his pace as his grip pulls you skirt free down your legs and begins tugging on your blouse next, pulling the fabric free of your arms before tugging his over his head

“I need ya, Addy.” He tells you on a desperate breath, the deep-set tone of his voice more frantic than you can ever remember hearing.

Finished tugging your stocking loose, it’s when Will grabs for your knickers, those silk knickers Tommy bought, the ones he was touching you in earlier this afternoon, that’s when you finally grab firmly at his hands, and make this top. Forcing Will to look at you, really look at you, as he hovers over your body on his knees against the old tick mattress

“I’m here Will… But it’s been five years. Can’ I get a moment to breathe?” You ask him, uncertainty building in your heart. 

You love him, of this you have no doubt, but you haven’t seen him in so long, you thought he was dead an hour ago, and you were just in this very bed with Tommy this morning. You can’t just shake off the last five years like it never happened now that he’s back in your arms. You need a moment to adjust, figure things out.

Releasing your knickers from his grip, Will leans down over your body, and gently takes your cheek as he gazes into your eyes.

“I just wanna hold ya, Addy, and feel you against me. I just wanna know you’re really hear.” He tells you softly, the vulnerability in his weathered blue eyes softening you too. The gentle way he cups your cheek brings it all back. He needs you, needs to know you’re really hear. After everything he’s surely been through, how can you deny him that.

In that moment you recognize him. This is your Will and he’s reaching out for you. Nodding silently against the palm of his hand, you reach out for his trousers and unfasten the buttons. You undress each other piece by piece only to find the unmistakable truth underneath the layers, that time touches and changes everything. He’s different than you remember in more ways you even realized. 

His muscles more defined, the lines and shape of his body are different than the boy who left you behind. But that isn’t what sticks with you, it’s the scars that riddle his flesh, red and angry, ones he never had before. They haunt your mind as Will comes to rest against your old faded quilt, pulling you on top of him, skin to skin, flesh to flesh. The knotted scar against his hip, you’re guessing that’s the cause of his limp as you find that old familiar position the two of you use to lay in during the quiet hours of the night or early morning before the war took him away.

You lay there for a long time as Will holds you close, secure in his arms, as his hand lazily runs up and down your back, across your arms and into your hair. Learn he dug his way out like Tommy, but he wasn’t so lucky and it was the German who found him. Said that’s where he was most of the time, in a camp on the wrong side of the war. You learn he was hit by shrapnel in his hip while digging trenches, before they got him back and he’s been recovering in a hospital before finding his way home. He doesn’t give you any details, but you feel him tense and clutch you tighter when he speaks of his time with the Germans.

Will drinks you in like a special bottle he’s kept reserved for just the right occasion, his hands roaming your body until he rolls you both over, pinning you beneath him without a word of warning. He comes to rest between your creamy thighs that slip open to mold against his body. A sharp breath escapes your lips in surprise as he gazes down at you. His once soft baby blues look over your face now with such intensity, darker and more tortured then you remember.

“I missed this so fuckin much… You were all I thought about over there… What kept me goin’.” He tells you before he leans down to kiss you hard.

The familiar scent of him envelopes of you. His body may be leaner and more riddled with scars than you remember, but it still feels like pieces of a memory your trying to put back together as he’s pressed against you, as his arms wind around you in that old familiar way. But the guilt that sinks heavy on your heart is new and more alive and poisonous than ever. Threatening to steal the very breath from your lips and still your heart. The memory of you held him together, while you let yourself slip away in the arms of another just this morning.

You try to forget what you already know as he moves inside you. Try to forget all the rules you’ve learned thus far since the war. Because he’s finally home. The only thing you wished and begged for for so long. But as you lie on your back, your eyes pulling open to stare up at the chipping paint on the ceiling as Will thrusts into you with reckless abandon, over and over again, the truth is undeniable. 

As he grabs tightly at the back of your thigh, yanking it against his hip for leverage, your body sliding further up the bed as he pounds harder and deeper into you from this new angle. Your hand wraps around the cold brass of the bedframe trying to hold yourself back from its bars as the other clings to the back of Will’s head, tangling in his hair, trying to find him. Find him in the frantic snap of his hips, the firm grip of his hands upon your body, the uneven rhythm of his breath buried deep in your neck, instead of looking in your eyes.

He’s trying to fuck the war out of himself or fuck it into you. You’re not sure which as you stare at the ceiling, tears welling in your eyes, because he’s miles away, almost as if he’s still gone. It’s then that you face the truth you’ve known all along… No man came back the same. It changed them all. You were so desperate to have him back you never considered he wouldn’t be the same. In all your prayers you never once considered what came home wouldn’t be Will, your Will. 

Not the Will that held your hand when you were just a girl so you’d feel less scared and alone when your Pa went off to the pub late at night, leaving you alone at all hours. The Will that knocked the front teeth out of a guy who thought he had to right to yank you into a dark alley and try to manhandle you on your way home one evening. The Will that held you by faint candlelight in the steady strength of his arms, presenting you with the ring he spent everything he could scrape together, just so he could ask for your hand, for you to be his forever.

The Will that fucks you senseless, unable to meet your eyes, isn’t the same one that tumbled into this very bed with you, unable to keep his hands off you after promising before everyone you love to be each other’s until your last breath.

But there’s still glimpses of him as Will leans up on his arms, hovering over you, sweaty and spent from his release. Gripping at your jaw, he forces you to face him as his gaze grows heavy and pained with the sight of sadness in your eyes. His thumb strokes softly at your cheek, before he kisses you hard. His sexy pout drawing your lower lip into his mouth as he tastes you. His head coming to rest against yours as he clutches you close, promises falling desperately from his heavy breath. Giving you everything he has left…

“Things’ll get better Addy, I promise. I know I’m not… But I still love you so fuckin’ much. You’re still everythin’ to me.” He swears it to you, desperate for you to believe him. 

In that moment, you realize he may not be the same Will, but this Will doesn’t need you or your love any less than the other did. In fact, he probably needs you more. And you swear you won’t be ungrateful for that miracle as you wrap him in your arms and hold him equally close. Whoever he is now, whatever he’s battling, you’ll get through together… Like everything before this. Like you always have.

* * *

Your heart’s been torn in two and not in some clean smooth line either. No, this is jagged and ugly, and stings to the touch. Will’s come back to you like a miracle in a world so darkened by soot and heartache that you believed those things didn’t happen to decent people anymore. But every rose has its thorns and this one’s left your hand punctured, sliced, and bloody as you try to hold it. Because you’re learning dreams aren’t always what you think they’ll be. Will may be home, but he isn’t the man that left. 

You feel ungrateful and angry with yourself for even acknowledging that. What right do you have to ask for more when you’ve already been given so much? When any widow or mother who’s buried a son would beg for this chance, even if what came back was only the shadow of a man. This Will may be covered in sharp edges and spinney barbs with storm clouds permanently entrenched in his eyes, but he isn’t cruel or unkind to you, and he still loves you just as deeply. And despite everything you’ve done, you still love him too.

The guilt you feel as he reaches for you – his girl, pulling you to him, his mouth hungry for your kiss, for your love. The guilt you feel when he’s buried deep inside you, making you his completely as his hands and mouth desperately taste and tease until he has you screaming his name in the throes of ecstasy. 

The guilt you feel when he startles too quick or jumps in the night to something that isn’t there. When his agony and continued suffering reminds you of Tommy… When you’re reminded of Tommy. That’s when the guilt is so strong it grabs at you with blunt unrelenting fingers that nearly strangle the life right out of your heart.

There was no questioning it’s over. Ending as quickly and quietly as it began. Far as you could tell no one ever discovered your dirty little secret beyond your neighbors and they aren’t talking. Your husband is home, back from the dead. And he’s so happy you waited for him, so relieved Tommy made it back too, that is best pal kept his promise and kept your safe… It became an unspoken agreement, whatever happened between you and Tommy, that secret would die with you both.

But you hadn’t realized how deeply you’d fallen for Tommy until he was gone. You let yourself believe you kept a safe distance, a wall between him and your heart. Just comfort between two lost and lonely souls. Just a best friend keeping promises he made down in the muddy pits of hell. But you were a bloody fool. And every day that past only proved it more. Tommy’s absence became a festering hole inside you.

Made all the more worse by the fact that he wasn’t gone at all, just out of your reach. Your eyes would follow him around the betting shop at work or the Garrison. Stealing a glance beneath your lashes whenever you felt you could safely get away with it. Your heart hammering in your chest whenever he stood near, the scent of him filling you. You felt like a fuckin bastard. Like your heart was betraying Will in the deepest way possible.

Tommy on the other hand, wouldn’t even look at you. The few times your eyes met he’d quickly look away. When he spoke to you now it was always formal, distant and felt like a knife slicing at your heart. He had cut you clean from his life the second Will reappeared and you understood. 

He was Will’s best pal. Promised to watch out for you and look what came of that. You know his guilt must surely be as heavy as your own. He’s known Will even longer than you have. But another part of you hates him for pulling away so swiftly. As if this were easy for him, as you struggled and suffered alone with your misguided longing heart in the unspoken shadows where secrets lie.

You’ve finally reached your boiling point after a long day at the betting shop. You were at your wits end all around. Will had tossed and turned with nightmares all night. He’d been short with you in the morning, refusing to speak a word on the matter, before throwing on his cap and taking off to do more dirty work like a good Blinder. And then Tommy had the nerve to carry on about his day in this cramped little shop as if you weren’t there at all. Even dismissing you when you tried to come to him about your growing concerns for Will. 

Moving in and out of the shop all day as he usually did, but come dusk, he came over to where you and Polly were sitting asking for the day’s numbers. He used to always ask you the count, but now his eyes only meet Pol’s. He takes what he came for, pulling away on a cigarette as he nods in agreement, before turning in for his office. And that was it. The final fucking straw on a day that wouldn’t stop testing you. You at least had the good sense to excuse yourself politely to Polly before charging after him into the office.

Tommy only turns around when you close the door and storm over to him at his desk. You can see from the disinterest in his eyes, the sharp set features of his face, he’s not in the mood as he moves to step around you and leave, but by then you’re fuming.

“Stop ignorin’ me, Tommy! Stop pretendin’ I’m not fuckin’ here.” You move in front of him, standing tall between his desk and the wall so he can’t get past you. Blocking his body and forcing him to look at you as you boldly stare him down, meeting his eyes in a fearless challenge of your own.

Your heart is pounding, chest huffing in anger and irritation. You’re exhausted - mentally and emotionally so when Tommy suddenly turns the tables on you, you never saw it coming. Grabbing at your waist, he pushes you up against the wall of his office. His body pinning you to it, you can feel all of him up against you, the heat of his body pressing into you though his suit. 

Your anger instantly extinguished as an old familiar heat begins to coil and come back to life inside you now that he’s finally near you once again. You thank the lord, the blinds are drawn down on the windows of his office as Tommy’s hand grabs firmly at the apple of your cheek. His other coming to rest against the wall over your head, encaging you as he leans in so close, his breath heating your lips, his piercing gaze pinning you in place.

“I see ya, Addy. You’re all I fuckin see. I haven’ gone a day without thinkin’ about ‘cha ya. Is that what ya want to hear?” Tommy practically growls at you, his voice low and dangerous as the look in his eyes burns you alive in a boiling sea of blue. 

His forehead presses firmly against your own, your breath mingling as his lips linger temptingly just a heartbeat away. Your hands find their way around him, needing to touch him, feel him in the palms of your hands once more. Fisting at the back of his button-down, you pull Tommy closer, your hands moving of their own volition and need.

You knew you missed him, no amount of guilt seemed to quench that. But you didn’t realize how much until Tommy’s mouth pressed into yours with bruising force, smothering your lips and stealing your breath from your lungs. You’d longed for a moment alone with him so badly. Just one more moment. He was ripped out of your life so abruptly, so suddenly. You didn’t have any say in the matter, but Fuck - as Tommy’s leg pushes its way between yours, leaning in against the heat between your thighs, you suddenly find yourself wishing he’d just tug up your skirt and take you right there, make you his again.

You nip at his lower lip in hunger, seeking the wet warm relief of his mouth. In his absence you’ve learned a terrible truth… This is the only language you and Tommy learned how to speak fluently. How you express everything you feel for each other. Never daring to utter words that were dangerous or explosive, you spoke with your bodies. Saying words your lips didn’t dare utter aloud.

The spark between you and Tommy is electric and humming through your veins like a morphine drip as your eyes slip closed, your breath growing heavy in his mouth as fire begins to heat up your insides under his touch. Tommy presses deeper into the center of your thighs. The jolt of electrify that shoots through you on contact leaves you to sinking further down along the wall as he slowly moves against you. 

A quiet muffled cry escapes your delirious breath your eyes flutter open and get lost in the depth of his. Watching as Tommy’s eyes glaze over as if he’s drunk off what he can do to you, how he can make you crumble for him so easily, as he continues to rock slowly against you. You ache for him. Your body begs for him like the beating of your heart. Your hands slip around the back of his neck to hold him close as you inhale sharply, your hips slowly beginning to grind against him in return, creating more delicious friction between you.

“Feels good, doesn’ it love?” Tommy draws you in, his breath coming out deeper and quicker. Sounding as hungry and delirious as you feel.

Your body calls for his touch, like your heart calls for his love, his absence has been unbearable. So when Tommy quickly pushing off the wall and lowers down into his office chair, drawing you to him, you don’t protest even though you know you should. Your thighs tremble and clench on either side of him as you pull up your skirt and straddle his lap, torn between desire and fear. 

Staring into Tommy’s eyes it takes your breath away, the endlessness of his blues, you have no doubts… This man loves you. You’ve known it for a long time, denied it the air to give it life until you lost him completely. But as Tommy’s hand grips at your hip, pulling you down in his lap as he rocks against you, you know he’s trying to show you his love for you hasn’t changed. His eyes staring boldly into yours as if you’re the only thing he wants, as if he could stare at you forever.

“Tommy,” His name rolling off your breath with same desperate need that drives the rhythm of your hips against the front of his trousers. God help you, you love him too, and you’ve missed him so fucking much. He’d become such an important part of your life, of your heart. That didn’t stop just because everything got turned around. You can’t just turn the feelings off.

Lost in this moment with Tommy, the love in his eyes is all you can see as he becomes yours and you become his for the first time in weeks. His teasing breath fanning your lips like whispers of a kiss as you shiver against him. His deft fingers quickly undoing the top buttons of your blouse, before his face dips down, pressing soft wet kisses against the tops of your breasts as your hands tangle and pull at his hair.

 And you swear if he keeps going as you grind against the hard length barely contained in his trousers, you’re gonna come. Having gone without him, after losing him so abruptly, your body was already on edge and begging for the release the moment he touched you.

And Tommy knows it. He always knows it. After months of sharing your bed, Tommy made it his mission to master all the little telltale signs when your desperate body was beginning to unravel.

“That’s it, Addy. Come for me.” Tommy coaxes you, his breath desperate, hungry, and wavering as he pulls back from your breasts to watch you come undone. 

The dangerous command of his voice is a mixture of gravel and insanity as his breath fans your lips, so close you swear you can taste him. And you can hear the words his lips don’t say - Be mine. Show me you can still be mine just a little longer as his palms grip your hips and rocks you helplessly against him, pushing you close to the edge just for him. You feel your resolve crumbling as pleasure coils and builds inside you until the pressure is almost more than you can bear, your body teetering over the edge ready to fall. 

Your breath comes out in quiet little gasps as Tommy look at you like a thief who’s found his treasure, gleaming and fixated on the sight of you. You almost forgot that Tommy gets off on this. Knowing he’s the best you’ve ever had, that can push you over the edge anytime, anywhere, and you think he probably needs to be reminded of that now more than ever.

But then you think of Will. Your Will, the man you also love. Your husband and the hell he’s going through. The limp of his leg, his body riddles with scars. The way he hollers in the night, the torture on his breath like nothing you’ve ever heard before. The way he numbs it at the bottom of a bottle, desperate for relief, refusing to tell you what he sees, what happened to him. The way he looks at you in his most desperate moments, with his tortured blue eyes like he’s on his last limb, like you’re all he has left that’s good in this world. You’re eyes suddenly slam shut as you stop moving and pull Tommy’s hands from your hips.

“Tommy stop. Stop, we can’, we can’ do this to Will.” You practically beg him, squeezing your eyes shut as you scramble off his lap, looking anywhere but him. 

Legs trembling as lean against his desk and push down your skirt, release ripped jarringly from your body like a bucket of icy water poured on a hot flame. You stare blankly into space as you try to wrap your mind around what just happened. You’ve never done anything like that before. Before the war, you had eyes for only one man, all you saw was Will, he was your everything. Tears burn and threaten to spill from your eyes as a rattled breath slips past you lips… You love your husband. Who are you becoming?

Tommy quickly rises from his chair too and moves away from you. Scrubbing his hands over his face before he blows out a long-heated breath as he paces. Clearing his throat, he roughly snatches a cigarette off his desk, lighting it in haste before he takes a long drag. You watch him as he stands there, across the desk from you, pulling away at a cigarette as he pours himself a drink and then promptly swallows it in one gulp. 

You can see it in his gaze, an emotion so rare it’s unmistakable as it hangs blindingly from his eyes - guilt. Your chest tightens as your heart reflects the same emotion. Tangled up in your own turmoil, sometimes you forget Will’s been Tommy’s best pal since they were just boys.  He’s known him longer than you have. You’re reminded it’s not just you who gets to shoulder the burden of betraying Will.

“Go home to your husband, Adeline.” Tommy finally speaks. His voice low and distant, unable to meet your gaze.

“Tommy-“ You try, heart breaking for him too and the mess you’ve both found yourselves in, because you finally understand why he walled you out when Will came home, why he’s sending you away – Tommy’s trying to do right by his best mate.

“I said, go home.” He states firmly, turning away from you entirely, without another word.

Nodding slowly, you smooth down your skirt, and tuck a strand behind your ear. Maybe Tommy was right all along… It’s too dangerous for you to attempt anything, but a clean break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who are wondering… I modeled Will after Jimmy Darmody from Broadwalk Empire. That’s who I picture when I write him. I feel like he’d fit perfectly with the Peaky Crew.


	4. Promises To Keep || Part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: Brief adult situations, mentions of POW camps, post-traumatic stress, flashbacks, domestic violence
> 
> We’ve seen what makes Tommy and Addy sizzle and spark. So this chapter explores a little more of what made Addy hold on to WIll even after he was gone, while still being torn over Tommy. 
> 
> If I wrote this well enough, I want you to be morally conflicted. I want you unsure of how you want this to end. Everyone had a stake in the game. Everyone has a reason to win. I wrote this story with the intention of it being very morally gray. Everyone is no more a sinner than a saint. Everyone is dirty for their own reasons. Hopefully I achieved that level of conflict. 
> 
> Also, I did do research on POW camps in WWI to try to keep this as authentic as I could. And it’s important to keep in mind this was really the generational that brought to light “shell shocked” and back then society wasn’t really sure what to do with them or how to help them.
> 
> As always kudos and comments are everything! I'm dying to know what you guys think!

After that day in the office, you keep your distance from Tommy. You realize he was right all along. You can’t go back to being friends like you had naively believed in the beginning, you had never really been friends from the start. Tommy had always been Will’s friend. You knew him because you hung on Will’s arm, you were Will’s girl. 

And while you had grown close in your own way after the war before sleeping together. That closeness was still brought on by Tommy’s commitment to keeping his promise to his best pal. You realized whatever justifications you made while Will was gone, while he was dead, what you did with Tommy in his office that day was cheating. Plain and simple. There’s was no moving that boulder in any other direction. 

So in order to live with an action you swore you’d never commit, you stayed away from Tommy, you kept your distance. For the sake of your husband and your marriage, you steered clear of the temptation of Thomas Shelby.

There were times you second guessed your choice to give up on your love for Tommy, to give up the love he had for you. But as the weeks went by, Will let the walls come down and you both grew steadily closer. You began to rediscover your love, rediscover each other. 

He began to open up and tell you about the war. Revealing after the explosion he dug himself out, but the Germans found him. He had been kept in a camp with hundreds of other men, surrounded by barbwire fencing. Little by little the pieces came out, some late at night, more after he had a few too many. He explained he lived in a makeshift tent most of the time, digging holes in the ground to keep warm at night when there wasn’t mud.

Men were always sick from typhus or cholera and dying all around him every day, some in his hands. There was never enough food, mostly just soup or scarce amounts of water that became tainted when heavy rains would make the latrine overflow. 

After half a bottle of whiskey one night, Will told you he had been kept close to the front line and that in some of his darkness moments, digging trenches and carting away bodies until he was sure he would collapse, he could see the other side, he could see his fellow men fighting, he just couldn’t reach them without getting shot. Breaking the rules meant confinement, in small places with no light for up to a week, or being tied to a post for days, or beaten severely.

He revealed he got the limp from flying shrapnel when he was digging the trenches. Said it got infected and he nearly died. He held on for you, convinced he’d see you again one day if he just held on, but it never healed right. 

Will told you how he fought so hard to get back to you, refusing to give up even when he wanted to. He explained the prisoner exchange made the end of the war drag out, and even after they got him back he had spent months in a hospital recuperating.

You were angry he didn’t have anyone send word, angry he didn’t write, but you tried to understand… Will didn’t want you to see him like that. He didn’t want your reunion to be in a hospital bed while he felt broken and lame. Learning what he went through to get home to you, you knew you made the right choice. 

You loved him, deeply. Even more now that you understood the nightmare he had gone through. You loved him before you knew what love was. And as your Will began to reveal himself to you more and more, you knew in your heart you couldn’t give up on him anymore than you could cut off your own leg and pretend to not be crippled by the loss.

Will keeps his promise, he keeps trying to be the man he was before. One night he surprises you. Taking your hand gently into his, he leads you out into the night. Lantern steady in his hand, you don’t know where you’re going as Will leads your down the soot covered streets of Small Health. When most of the seedier crowd came out for the night. 

You had nearly turned in to bed for the night when he arrived home, excited and impatient like a boy about to sneak away with you. And for a moment he looks like the version of himself in his youth, before the war, sneaking you off before your father notices, to some private rendezvous where you could get lost in each other and forget the world.

You walk the streets side by side, his arm wrapped around your shoulders as he holds a lantern in the other. No one bothers you with Will by your side, no one messes with a Blinder, let alone one as notorious as Will. He had built a reputation for himself before the war, just like Tommy, that only seemed to amplify since he came back from the dead. 

You’re not sure where you’re going until you reach the mass of wood and steel that makes up Charlie’s yard down by the cut. All gnarled and jagged edges in the dark. The stars obscured by the factory smog still heavy in the air, you still feel unsure why you’re here as Will moves on ahead, you trail his step as he clutches tightly to your hand. Weaving you through machine parts and rusted out junk, Will leads you around to the back.

“Does Charlie and Curly know we’re here?” You whisper as if you’ve broken into some place you don’t belong.

“Yeah,” Will nods easily, lifting the lantern a little higher to see ahead his feet. “He gave the word.”

Rounding a corner, you reach Charlie’s barn. You’re confused more than ever why Will dragged you out of your home after midnight to take you to Charlie’s barn, but his secrets are yet to be revealed. Will releases your hand as you both go inside, hanging the lantern on an old nail hammered into one of the posts that holds the barn steady. You look around trying to get a sense of why he brought you here, before admitting defeating.

“What are we doing here?” You finally ask.

“I wanted to bring you to the place.” Will tells you simply as you look around to see what’s changed since the last time you were there. 

Not much from what you can tell, but everything is cloaked in shadows and poor lighting. It’s hard to see much of anything, not that you were ever an expert on Charlie’s yard or cared to be. Just another place to waste time in your youth. A place to run and hide, and make mischief of one kind or another.

“What place?” You ask as a quiet laugh breaks free, confused now more than ever over what he means as you snatch up an old horse shoe and give it an easy toss into the hay.

“Where I first knew I loved you.” Will says, the words vibrating at your back, instantly stopping you in your tracks as a shiver runs down your spine. You turn slowly to face him, the lantern casting shadows across his handsome face, making him glow in the yellow light of the flame.

“I was fourteen and you were twelve. I’d brought you here after you got into a fight with your old man. You found me on the street stirrin’ up trouble with Tommy an’ Arthur, an’ wanted to get away, so I took you here. It was late, an’ particularly dark that night, an’ all I had was that stubby fuckin’ candle.” He lets out an easy laugh at the memory.

“But I remember sittin’ in here with you an’ thinkin’ you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” Will’s words take your breath away, frozen and transfixed you watch as his slowly moves toward you in a shower of light and shadow. Brining it all back to you, a love nobody could break. The lifetime you shared before the war stole him away. You think you remember that night too. The first night he ever brought you to Charlie’s yard alone, after dark.

“I knew I loved you that night, Addy. An’ if given the chance, I’d have you as my girl the rest of my life. Only girl who didn’ look at me like I was trouble. Who’d look at me like I could be somethin’. An’ I use to think, if a girl as smart and pretty as you thought so, then maybe I could.” Will ends on husky whisper, wrapping you in his words and memories, as he stops in front of you. Softly he touches your cheek with the back of his hand as your heart races and you gaze up deeply into his eyes.

You catch sight of him pulling something from his jacket pocket as your gaze drops down to a little box held in his hand. Opening it up, inside revealed a silver band with delicate pedals and sweet ribbons engraved around a beautiful aquamarine gem.

You nearly gasp at the sight of it as your eyes shoot up in disbelief to Will’s smiling face and back down to the ring in the box.

“Will, what is this?” You ask, hardly able to catch your breath or believe your eyes.

“I told you when I married you I’d get you somethin’ better one day. You did such a great job holding everything together while I was gone that we ended up with some money after I took care of a few things for Tommy.” He explains, pulling the ring from the box before reaching for your trembling hand.

“Do you like it?” He asks as he slips the ring carefully onto your finger, next to the simple band of gold you had from your wedding day.

You gaze in wonder at the beautiful ring as it faintly sparkles against the lanterns flame on your finger, running your fingertips over it in awe as your heart beats hard in your chest.

“I love it,” You tell him, your breath heavy with disbelief. Hardly able to believe your eyes.

Taking your cheek gently into his hand, Will lifts your face until your eyes meet once again.

“You waited for me even after hope was gone. Held it together when anyone else woulda fallen apart. Your everything to me, Addy. An’ I don’ know what made ya fall for a fuckin bloke like me, but I’m pretty damn sure I’m the luckiest bastard for it.” He tells you, his words ending in a slight chuckled smirk before pulling you into his waiting kiss.

Your heart pains with the never-ending stings of guilt that wind like fine tendrils around your strangled heart, because you didn’t wait. You betrayed him and if he knew with who it’d break his heart too, but tonight you push that down. You bury it away. 

You don’t want to drown held down by the weight of your choices, tonight you just want to be here with your husband. Completely present in this beautiful moment with him. Just the two of you like before the war. So you set yourself free, sighing against the heat of his mouth as the kiss slowly breaks.

“I love you Adeline Darmody.” Will whispers softly to you in the pale light that surrounds you both, his full soft pout faintly brushing your lips with his declarations, before pulling you back in for another slow burning kiss. 

Running his tongue along the seam of your mouth, Will seduces your lips to part, deepening the kiss, as warm and wet meet for a taste. His hand finds your back, running along your spine and down to grip at your hip, pulling you deeper into the curve of him. You’re the first the break the kiss, smiling up at him in the shadows of the barn, as your chest rises and falls heavily against the heat of his kiss.

“I love you too William Darmody.” You whisper back to him as his fingers lacing through your hair and he smiles back you lovingly.

Your stomach clenches with the sight of it. Standing here alone with your husband in the pale lantern light, Will looks like the boy you fell in love with before life and the war stole it all away. 

Seeing him like this again feels like magic. It sparks and tingles just beneath your skin, your belly clenches and your heart races, you swear you could spend the rest of your days here and never want anything more, if only you could stay like this forever. Who you are today, holding onto everything you had before.

Leaning in, you give Will another quick kiss, but as he tries to deepen it, his arms pulling you close, you push off his chest and slip free of his grasp. Will watches you carefully, his eyebrow arching in question as you slowly back away from him and toward the darker end of the barn. Excitement building in your veins, your heart beginning to race harder as you flash him your best mischievous grin.

“You’re gonna have to work harder than that, Mr. Darmody.” You tease him, watching the rules of the game become clear in his mind as a smirk curls on his lips.

He holds your eyes for a moment and you brace yourself, heart pounding as you await his next move. When Will finally lunges for you, you squeal in delight, slipping out of his reach just before he can get ahold of you.

Moving quickly away, you glance back to see Will moving for the lantern still hanging on the nail, his pupils dark like madness in swirl of his beautiful blue eyes. You hold his gaze a moment longer before slipping into the shadows, deeper into the barn. 

You wander down toward what you think is the back, where the piles of hay are stacked. Your eyes slowly adjust to the lack of light that surrounds you, the world transforming into bleeding shades of grey and blackness, all melting and weaving together. The sound of his steps sends you glancing back over your shoulder.

Spotting the faint light of the lantern approaching, you knew Will could find you easily, he still knows Charlie’s yard better than you. It’s then you realize you want him to find you, as you slowly turn back his way. The light from the lantern illuminating you as Will rounds the corner of the stables.

Your eyes meet in the faint yellow light as your hands rise and find the top button to your white blouse. Slowly working it free before your fingers slip down to the next. You watch Will’s gaze become transfixed upon the movement of your hands and the skin you’re slowly revealing to him as he draws closer to you with every step.

“Is this what you want, Will?” You ask suggestively, your voice raspy, breath heavy as you slip free the button held between your breasts, growing more wanton by the second from the heat of his stare. You know what Will wants, you can see the familiar darkness in his eyes. And you know what you want too… Him. 

Sometimes it scares you how badly you want him still. As if losing him and thinking you’d never get to feel his love again made you realize how badly you covet it. Things may have been rocky when he first came home, so much time had passed, you were both different, but once he began opening himself back up to you, everything came back with it.

Will’s eyes flash up to yours with your question - full of innuendo, the heat of his gaze, the way he devours you with desire in his eyes, makes your belly tighten and skin grow flush even in the cold.

“Fuck,” You hear Will breath out on a heavy ragged breath as you finish the last few buttons on your blouse. He hooks the lantern on a nail hanging from another beam, practically to you now.

In seconds he’s on you, his mouth insistent and hungry against your own, pushing you back with the force of his kiss, as his arm encircle you, clutching you close against him and your arms tangle around the back of his neck.

When you break, it’s the sound of your breaths, heavy and panting that cuts through the quiet night air. Reaching the stacks of hay, Will hoists you up on a few bails, your legs spreading for him as he tugs your skirt up your thighs and slips between the warm embrace of them. 

His mouth latches briefly onto your jaw before slipping down to the skin you’ve exposed for him. Sucking and nip at the sensitive place along your neck he knows always draws a moan from your lips as his hands moving eagerly inside your open blouse.

“You’re everything I want, Addy.” Will says on a deep gritty breath, finally answering your question as you pull the suspenders off his shoulders and begin to frantically pull free the buttons of his shirt.

His palms are cold and rough against your soft skin, the contrast feels deliriously good as your hands work free his shirt, eager to feel him under your palms, feel his skin warm against your own. Your head drops back in a daze against the assault of his soft full lips, your heavy sighs echoing through the quiet barn. You arch against him, encouraging the heat of his mouth as it moves further down your body, taking your blouse with him.

Reaching for the bulge pressed tightly against his trousers and your thigh, you rub your palm against him, trying to ignite the same pleasure he’s bringing you. You unbutton his trousers and Will’s knees buckle against the hay stack as you take ahold of him with a tight grip. A low shaky moan vibrating against the top of your breast as you begin to stroke him just the way you know he likes. 

Will’s always been your weakness, from the first time he touched you. Since you first discovered how to make each other melt. The smell of him, the taste of him, the feel of him, he makes your body spark and sizzle under his undivided attention, under his love. He knows all your tender spots, every place that makes your whimper and beg, and you know his, all the little tricks and place that leave this fearless Blinder putty in your hands.

* * *

 You were late. You were never late and you should have known that would only raise hairs, but you had foolishly hoped just this once it’d slip by. That in all the chaos of runners, the counters, John calling out odds as he scribbles chalk to a board, while men shuffle in an out of the building to thrown down their last coin, you’d slip by unnoticed. But your gut was right and your hopes are as empty as dreams come morning light it seems these days. 

When you arrive at the betting shop, you slip past what feels like a herd of men, trying to disappear in the sea of them as they carry on at a dizzying pace. You hang your jacket over your chair and get right to it as if you had already been there. Plopping down in your usual chair, grabbing the slips, pulling the tally’s, but Polly is coming over, parting the sea before you’ve even gotten through the first few slips. You catch sight of her out of the corner of your eye as your face drops and you try to discretely pull your hair around your face.

“You’re late.” She says, stating the facts as she comes around your desk.

“I know. I’m sorry. Something came up.” You try to explain as you keep your hands busy, letting the papers slip through your fingers as you keep count, keeping your face down and your hair nearly in your eyes.

“Addy?” Polly calls, looking you over, you practically feel her gaze like a touch to your face, tugging it up to meet her eyes as she stops at the corner of her desk. Her tone neutral in a way that doesn’t make you second guess her call, but the knots in your belly know better as you finally glance up from your desk and meet her eyes. Trying your best to keep your hair in place the best you can.

“Stand up.” She orders almost instantly and you can see it in her eyes as your heart starts to hammer. Watch it register on her face as your duck your head back down to your desk.

“Pol, I’m trying to catch up on-“

“Up now,” she demands insistently, rounding the desk and pulling your chair back insistently.

Resigned to her will, you reluctantly your stand, because when Polly insists you’ve learned there’s no getting out of it. But you don’t look at her as you chew on your bottom lip. Keeping your eyes down, scanning the top of the desk, and hair in your face. But Polly doesn’t need or ask for permission as she moves to you, sweeping the hair back behind your ear and grabbing at your chin for a better look. You cringe even before she does.

“Holy shit,” Rolls heavily off her tongue, disbelief dripping from her words.

“He do this to you?” Polly inquires low on her breath, tilting your chin toward the light to examine the fresh bruise along the edge of your face, riding the ridge that joins your cheekbone and eye socket.

“It was an accident…” You try to explain before a pair of eyes that feel sharp like daggers pierce through you from across the room. 

Even now you can feel the hold of them from a mile away. Your breath quickens with a new alarm as your eyes glance over quick and spot Tommy standing next to the door of his office. Hands are shoved tightly in his pockets, but his is jaw flexing, eyes zeroed in on you and Polly, before he bursts to life like a fired pistol, grabbing his jacket and storming for the door.

“Fuck,” You swear on a harsh frantic breath, pulling from Polly’s grasp as you watch Tommy storm out the front door of the betting shop. You don’t even need to bother asking to know where he’s headed and that’s exactly what you didn’t want to happen.

“Watch me stuff, Pol.” You practically beg her in haste. Your frantic eyes meeting her gaze, you can see she has questions of her own – about you, about your face, and why your chasing after Tommy, but there’s no time for any of them as you take off after him before he does something that will only make a bad situation worse.

Like a man on a mission, Thomas Shelby storms down the dirty streets of Small Heath. Women and children scurrying out his way as men nod or bow their heads in a show of respect as he marches by like a force of nature. By the time you make it out of the betting shop you have to practically race down the lane to catch up with him. Clutching your long skirt, your heels sink in the mud and filth as you make haste down the crowded streets of early morning.

“Tommy,” You take ahold of his arm as you finally reach him. Trying to reason with him, but Tommy only shrugs you off and keeps pounding the soot covered streets, billow of smoke from his cigarette blowing past his lips, and trailing him like the stacks from a nearby factory.

You realize in that moment you’re going to have to be more forceful in your approach if you have any prayer of getting through to him. Racing around to the front of Tommy, you press firmly against his chest, pressing your weight into his waistcoat and button-down as you dig your heels into the dirt and soot, trying to make him stop.

“Thomas stop,” You demand more firmly. “Don’t make me make a scene in the street in front of everyone.”

Your words break through his anger, Tommy waivers for a brief moment, his gaze faltering from the determined road ahead of him and down to where you press against him. It’s only a brief moment, but you seize it as you snatch his hand in your own and drag him into the nearest alley way, where you can have a word without all of Small Heath hearing about it. Having surely caused enough of a scene as it is, since no one - short of Pol - grabs at Thomas Shelby the way you just did and gets away with it… But most of Small Heath still doesn’t know what else he let you get away with and you intend to keep it that way.

“It was an accident.” You tell him the moment you’re alone. Trying to catch your breath after taking chase as you release his hand and turn to face him before he can take off again.

Tommy let’s out a huffed breath and shakes his head at the ridiculousness of your statement. He’d be amused if he wasn’t so angry. Tossing his cigarette to the ground, he steps into your space, moving in on you. The heat of his eyes, the formidable stride of his gait, cause your feet to step back as Tommy approaches, trying to hold onto the distance between you until your back hits the brick wall and there’s nowhere left to go. Tommy’s all-encompassing in his approach, covering the front of you, his shadow swallowing you as he stops barely a foot away from your body. 

Your heart begins to pound hard in your chest with the closeness you two haven’t dared to share since that day in his office. Tommy’s hand reaches out for you, tucking your hair behind your ear to get a better look at the bruise along the edge of your face. His callused thumb runs delicately along the tender discolored flesh, sending shivers under your skin with the feel of his touch once again as you watch fire ignite in icy shards of blue, and realize, Tommy hates it even more from close up.

“He was dreaming.” You explain softly on a shaky breath, watching the anger of his furrowed brow as you he inspects you to ensure there aren’t any more and you try not to savor the feel of his touch of your face. He’s so close your almost afraid to speak anything loud, afraid when he responds the heat of his breath will only weaken your resolve.

“Dreaming…” Tommy scoffs loudly at your explanation. He steps back from you, having heard enough, he turns toward the entrance of the alley. Driven to return to his hunt for Will and have him answer a few questions of his own, but you swiftly snatch at the lapels of his jacket and move in front of him, blocking his way. Forcing Tommy to look at you as you protect your husband from an unfair wrath.

“It’s like with Danny, Thomas. He has nightmares almost every night. And sometimes he has them awake too.” You try to explain it the best you can as your chest tightens with each word.

“Sometimes it’s like he’s not even there. Like he doesn’t even know where he is or who I am.” You struggle in your desperation, trying to put words to something you don’t even fully understand yourself, but you need Tommy to understand Will didn’t hurt you intentionally. Will needs help and you feel if anyone can understand the price of war, it’s him.

Tommy stops pressing forward, his eyes falling and holding yours, and you can tell he’s finally listening. Finally understanding the gravity of the situation. Because Tommy does understand. All too well in fact. Before Addy he hardly slept and never peacefully. And after Addy… he tries not to close his eyes unless he absolutely has to. Just another ghost to haunt him in his dreams. Only this one, she took what was left of his soul.

“He was having a nightmare. I tried to wake him, but it was like he couldn’t even see me. He thought he was being attacked. I got him good gettin’ him off me. The glass cut his head open when it broke. It probably needs stiches, but he’s too damn stubborn to have it looked at. He thinks he deserves it Tommy… after what happened to me.” You ramble, your thoughts scattered, your breath as frantic and confused as you feel. You knew none of them came back the same, but you weren’t prepared for how helpless you’d feel when you couldn’t fix it. When you couldn’t make it better or even lessen the pain.

“It’s like he couldn’t see me, Tommy. It’s like I wasn’t there at all.” You bite at your bottom lip, tears springing to your eyes.

“When he finally came too, he was bleedin’ everywhere. He wouldn’ even let me help him. He wouldn’ let me near him once he realized he struck me. He’s terrified of himself. He blames himself for everything. An’ I don’ know how to help him.” The words fall from your lips on a desperate breath as your shoulders tremble and shake. Your eyes welled heavy with tears you can’t hold inside any longer as you finally say the words aloud you’ve been holding so tightly inside you. Trying to stay strong.

Your hands wipe at your cheeks, pushing away at the tears as fast as they come. Just when you think things are starting to come back together, it all falls apart again. You were startled when Will turned on you. Terrified when you saw his fist coming down on you as he held you to the bed. Grabbing the glass from the nightstand and smashing it into his head had been instinct alone. Everything happened so fast, in the blink of an eye in your mind. 

But the eyes that held you to that bed weren’t the Will you know. His lips mumbling something in a language you didn’t understand. But none of that was scarier or broke your heart more than the look on Will’s face when he finally came to his senses. When he realized he had put his hands on you. Watching Will rip himself apart over what he had done, watching him lose faith and trust in himself a little more everyday… Nothing in this world could have prepared you for how painful and powerless that would make you feel.

Without words, Tommy pulls your tightly against his chest, his hand slipping into your hair, the other rubbing at your back. Unable to watch you crumble and not reach for you. Tommy swore to himself he wouldn’t touch you again after that day in the office and your distance only affirmed that was the right choice. But finally having a moment alone with you, even his best intentions proved weak.

And you’re just an malleable as you strive for distance, as the smell of Tommy engulfs your lungs, whiskey rich and smoky harsh, you feel your heart beating faster. It’s like breathing life back into your soul. A chamber all his own. A place only Tommy can reach. 

You want to bury yourself deeper into him, wrap your arms desperately around him. You know you’ll be safe there, from everything you can’t fix, everything that makes you feel like a failure, but then you catch yourself. Catch yourself being weak and giving in to the fire. You know in your heart, you can’t keep doing this. It isn’t fair to any of you. And you don’t want to hurt Tommy any more than you want to hurt Will. That was the promise you made to yourself when you left Tommy’s office that day. You’re only making things worse when you let the fire reignite. 

And what if someone saw you? How would you explain this… wrapped in Tommy’s arms, breathing him in?  Your heart begins to race and clenches as you quickly untangle from Tommy. Taking a step back as your eyes scan nervously about your surroundings to see if anyone is watching, but everyone out on the street seems too busy trying to make the most of the day, enough to get by.

You wipe the remaining tears that have fallen from your eyes and suck a sharp breath in, trying to compose yourself.

“He needs a friend, Tommy. He’s lost and hurting, and I don’t know how to help him.” You practically plead. 

For being best mate’s since childhood, Tommy has steered clear of Will since he came home. Will hasn’t said much about it, he wouldn’t, and the fact that Tommy blows everyone off these days makes the odd circumstance easier to swallow, but you can see it hurts Will and you blame yourself for that too. If you and Tommy hadn’t – Maybe Will would have someone to turn to in his time of need.

Tommy shakes his head at the notion of what you’re suggesting as he pulls a cigarette from his pocket, letting it dangle from his lip, before his deft fingers slap a match against the box in his other hand. His easy dismissal only ignites the fire in your belly and amplifies your frustrations. Your world is hanging on by a thread while Tommy roams about Small Heath carefree having walled Will out of his life, like he’s punishing him, right along with you.

“An’ why not? Thought he was your best pal. You’ve known him all your life. Or is Thomas Shelby too mighty for a broken solder now?” You challenge, jaw growing tight as your irritation gets the best of your tongue. As Tommy gets the best of you, the way he seems to do so easily, both the good and the bad.

The fire in your tone gets a rise out of Tommy quick as he plucks the cigarette from his lips and counters you. No less immune to the embers that smolder between you, always ready to spark and reignite.

“What do you purpose, Addy? Should I invite him to the Garrison for a drink after I’ve been fuckin’ his wife for months? An’ what should we talk about, aye? Ask him if he loves the way you let out that little gasp just before you cum or perhaps how fuckin tight an’ wet you get? Or is that only for me, love?” Tommy comes at you, his tongue as sharp as the razors on his cap. As piercing as the daggers in his heart every time he’s reminded how much you love Will. How he lost you to a better man. Watching from the sidelines as you and Will grow closer with each passing day.

“Stop it!” You snap at him crossly, snatching the cigarette from his fingers as he draws it back to his mouth, tossing it violently to the ground below as you resist the urge to smack him hard across the face. Your chest huffing, how dare he think he can speak to you like that.

Tommy looks down at his cigarette you just threw in the mud, head tilting slightly as his jaw tightens in irritation before his gaze returns to you and he slowly moves in on you once again.

“Don’t you see, I can’t be his friend, Addy. I fucked his wife.” Tommy’s voice is low and dangerous, penetrating and calling for you as your back stumbles into the wall once again trying to evade the power he has over you.

“An’ given the chance…” Tommy tells you, his voice dipping down to a gritty whisper as he leans into your mouth. His hand finding and gripping at your jaw as his thumb dances around the edge of your bottom lip, but never quite touches the plump flesh. Your heart is pounding, you’re struggling to remember how to breathe as you gaze into Tommy’s hypnotic eyes and recognize the heat blowing back at you. You’re a cornered animal, backed into a trap. You still want him, you still miss him, and worst of all, Tommy knows it.

You close your eyes, trying to wall him out, trying to numb your heart and stay strong. You don’t know how you got here, in love with two men, but you’re trying to do the right thing.

“Tommy, don’ do this…” You whisper, your breath desperate. 

And despite how selfish and cold Tommy can be at times, he does as you ask, instantly, because you wield power over him too. He steps back from you, releasing your face, but as your eyes open once again and you meet his gaze, you see it – undeniable pain. Tommy still wants you too. Still loves you, you were the only thing that breathed life back into him after the war, and your rejection, even for reasons you both understand, has still been incredibly painful for him. 

His head bows, his cap taking the space in your vision his face just held, razors shining as the early morning light pierces down upon them, peeking out from a bleak overcast sky. When he glances back up at you a new cigarette is lit and hanging from his lip.

“If he touches you again he’s answering to me.” Tommy states firmly, unequivocally. There’s no question and you can see there will also be no persuasion. He’s giving you his word of warning now.

“He won’t.” You swear it. Will never has before, not even close. He threatened any man who thought of raising a hand to you. And the look in Will’s eyes when he realized what he had done… You’re certain it’ll haunt you the rest of your days.

Tommy’s seas of blue linger on you as the sun breaks through the clouds once again, bathing your both in touches of heat and light. There’s a calling in his eyes, you recognize it as the sun pierces his pupil before Tommy swiftly turns and walks away without another word. One hand stuffed in his waistcoat, the other pulling away at a cigarette that encircles him in a cloud of smoke.

“Atleast tell me how to help him.” You yell back at Tommy as he goes.

“You can’t. We can’t be fixed, Addy.” Tommy hollers back, never turning back to face you until he reaches the end of the alleyway. Only then does he look back over his shoulder, your eyes locking in the moment.

“Didn’ you know? We died over there in the mud.” He tells you like a bullet aimed straight at your heart, before he turns back and disappears into the crowded Small Health streets. Leaving you alone with your thoughts and your plight.

* * *

 Will comes home late that night. You expect him to be drunk, but he’s not. He looks painfully sober as he comes to stand beside you in your tiny hutch kitchen. Drawing your hands into his as he leads you over to your kitchen table, having you take a seat before he drags the other directly in front of you and lowers into it. He bought you your favorite treat from the little candy shop down by the church where you got married. 

One of the things you love so much about him, he never forgets the little things you love, but you can tell none of that matters to him tonight as his hand brushes the side of your face, moving your hair back from the spot where he struck you earlier that morning. His thumb sweeping tenderly over the spot as his face twists in agony. His eyes growing that tortured shade of blue that breaks your heart.

“It’s a’right, Will.” You try to reassure him. Thankful he’s finally willing to touch you, be near you again, after being terrified of himself and inconsolable after what he’d done this morning.

Will’s blue eyes shoot to yours as you speak, tears glistening in his baby blues as his jaw clenches tight.

“No, it’s not Addy.” He tells you, his hand clutching desperately at your cheek as his words drip and drown with guilt and remorse.

“It’s not a’right. Nobody puts their hands on you, understand? Least of me.” His voice breaks at the end, cracking under the weight of own his desperation.

You reach for his hand on your face and cover it with your own, holding him close as his face falls and shakes from side to side with shame. He scrubs angrily at his eyes as the tears escape, before his face lifts and his gaze returns to you, his thumb stroking gently at your cheek.

“Your safety is the only thing that matters me, understand? If something happens again. If I- If I disappear or somethin’, don’ try to wake me, don’ try to help me. You get as far away as you can, understand? Do whatever you gotta do. I need you safe.” He tells you earnestly, his eyes drilling into yours as his hand presses into your cheek to affirm his point.

You can feel it from every bone in your body, Will needs you to hear him right now. He needs you to promise, and you’re just about to until he pulls his gun from behind his back and places it on the table beside you both. The weighted metal sounding heavy and ominous as it lands on the old wooden surface. Your eyes shoot to it in horror before flying back to Will’s.

“I wan’ you to take this. You do whatever you have to do to protect yourself, understand? Promise me, Addy.” His voice is desperate as tears spring to your eyes and mirror his own. You can tell this has been eating him alive all day as he tries to come up with a solution.

Your heart begins to pound as you shake your head slowly from side to side.

“No,” You whispers to him. “No Will.”

“I need to know your safe, even if that means from me. I couldn’ live with myself if I hurt ya again. I’d want ya to pull that trigger, Addy… If it meant keepin ya safe, I’d want ya to do it.” He pleads with you, his breath heavy and desperate. 

You can see it in his eyes, he loves you so much, but he’s scared. You’ve never seen him this scared. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him. He doesn’t know how to stop it and he doesn’t trust himself anymore. He doesn’t believe in himself, but the thought of hurting you again is more than he can bare.

“I can’t.” You gasp, tears falling from your eyes, no longer able to hold them inside the rattle of your chest any longer.

“I can’t do that, Will.” You can’t even bear the thought of shooting of him. You were scared when he turned on you this morning, but the thought of shooting him scares you more. You can’t shoot the man you love. You can’t turn on each other.

“Shhh, it’s ok. It’s gonna be a’right.” Will soothes you as your tears starts to fall, drawing his head down to yours as he softly strokes your cheek, wiping at your tears.

“That’s not gonna happen. It’s not gonna come to that. I just need to know your safe.” He whispers to you softly, like he used to when you were a scared little girl. 

Alone in the building after your father went off to the pub. Leaving you to fend for yourself and protect yourself against the other boarders in your apartment, some single men. Never knowing what would happen if someone tried to have their way with you, but Will was there, holding your hand well into the night, promising to fight off anyone who tried to lay a hand on you, before he’d sneak out when your old man stumbled home.

Will leans in and kisses your mouth, soft and deep. His lips pressing into yours in the old familiar way that always makes your heart racing, but your fear quiet. You run your hand up along his hair, but as he winces you instantly remember. Pulling back quick you finally get a good look at it, you see a jagged cut going into his hairline held together by blood and stiches. Tears spring to your eyes once again with the sight of it as your fingertips faintly touch the scalp around it.   
  


“Oh my god Will, I’m so sorry.” You apologize profusely, your throat closing in around your words as you look at what you did to him.

Taking your hand from the cut, Will draws it to his lips giving your fingertips a gentle peck.

“Ya did the right thing, Addy. You defended yourself just like I taught ya. Nobody lays a hand on my girl, she’s got grit.” He smiles at you, trying to win a smile off you in return as he reassures you he’s alright, giving your fingertips one more quick kiss.

“It’s gonna heal up just fine.” He licks his lips and you can tell by the glint in his eyes he has something more to tell you.

“I talked to the Doc today like ya asked, after he stitched me up.” He tells you softly, trying to ease some of your concerns. Rubbing your hand between his before he laces your fingers.

“They don’ know nothin, babe. Nobody seems to know anythin bout what’s goin on in my head. They just tell ya to move on, put it behind you, your home.”  Will tells you, a hopelessness plaguing his eyes once again before his face drops down against your laced hands. 

You watch as the muscles in his shoulders tighten and tense. He’s struggling. Facing the fight of his life and he’s facing it alone, but not completely. You need him to know you will stand against the gates of hell with him, by his side, and never waiver. If that’s what it takes. Just like he always stood by you.

“But I got somethin.” He sounds a little more hopeful. His face rising again to offer you a sad smile.

“I ran into Tommy today. An’ he gave me something that’s gonna help with the nerves, help me get some sleep…” 

Your heart pains with Tommy’s name. It’s a bittersweet elixir, because you know, having seen him today, Tommy spoke with Will because of your talk. He did it for you and that only resurfaces all the old familiar guilt churning inside you as you try to protect Will from what you did and live with it yourself. But then Will’s searching your eyes and he looks so damn hopeful. And you can hear before he ever starts speaking, he needs you to have hope too.

“I’m gonna figure out what’s going on with me, Addy, with or without the Docs. You’ll see, I can be the man you want me to be. I can be who I was before.” He promises you and you can see it in his eyes, he needs you to believe him. He needs this as much as you do. 

You nod easily, taking his word as you reach for him. Will pulls you onto his lap, into his arms, holding you desperately tightly against him as he buries his face against the comfort of your breast. You wrap him in your arms, stroking back the long strands of his hair as you place a gentle kiss atop his head and press your cheek to him.


	5. Promises To Keep || Part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think the chapter speaks for itself. Hope you’re feeling atleast a lil torn over where this should end. Only one more chapter to go. Also there’s Alot of adult content in this chapter (alot for me anyway).
> 
> As always kudos and comments are greatly appreciated.

The sausage sizzles and pops as you turn it over in the pan. The room filled with the savory aroma of eggs and breakfast sausage early in the morning. Will’s set to leave in an hour or two and you can’t very well send him off without a full belly. He busies himself getting ready for the job. Throwing what he needs in a bag, pulling the blankets up to straighten out the bed, and picking up around the room for you.

 Like a couple of bookends that hold everything together, back to back facing the world, working as a team. That’s how it always felt with Will and every day that passes it feels more and more that you’re reclaiming the synchronizing rhythm you both always shared so seamlessly before the war.

You’re flipping the eggs one last time when you feel his arms wrap around your waist, coming up from behind you.

“Smells delicious.” Will says, sweeping your hair onto one shoulder to draw his lips against the slope of it.

“Can’t very well send my man off without a proper meal, now can I?” You tease, glancing back at him over your shoulder to flash a crooked little grin.

“You’re too good to me.” Will smiles, peppering the slope of your neck with a scattering of kisses.

Lifting the frying pan off the stove, you slip from his grasp as you move over to the plates waiting and arranged on the block beside it.

“What’s the job again?” You ask absently. Will mentioned it briefly. It’s always brief when it’s Blinder business and you try to understand, he doesn’t like to get you mixed up in the dirtiness of it. In Will’s mind, the betting shop is as far as you need to go with the Blinders. It’s part of keeping you safe, always has been. Dishing you both up a plate, you return the pan to the stove to cool and turn to face him.

Will shrugs. “Whatever it has to be. Whatever Tommy needs to get done.” He answers vaguely, the way he always does. He reveals more on some occasions, when it’s really weighing him down or he’s having a rough night, but you know it’s important to Will to keep you safe.

His hand reaches out to gently cup your cheek, dragging his thumb against the apple of it. “Ya know how it is, babe.” He reminds you, hoping you’ll understand.

You nod against his touch. You do know how it is. Will’s been involved in trouble one way or another for as long as you’ve known him. A man full of such vast contradictions. His touch is soft and loving, you have his heart completely, but then he goes out to the streets to commit unspeakable acts in his razor lined cap. And his complexities have only deepened since he came back from the war, more rooted and dug in deep like an old jagged scar. But it’s those complexities, those contradictions, that speak to his depth. That reveal your husband is capable of just about anything, but by your side – his heart still remembers how to be soft.

“Why’s it gotta be two whole days though?” You try not to pout as you lean your cheek deeper into the palm of his hand. You hate when he’s gone overnight. After years of having him away, you’re more than capable of holding everything down in his absence, but you miss him. You always miss him.

“Gonna miss me, ey?” He gleams, smile spreading wide on his face as a little spark of mischief fills his soulful blue eyes. And just like that he looks like a boy again, the boy you fell so madly in love with before you even knew what love was.

“Maybe,” You tease back with a wicked grin. Slipping from his hand, you grab the toast and jam first, bringing it over to the kitchen table. You barely set it down upon the surface before you feel Will’s arms wind around your waist again as he leans into you, kissing you tenderly on the back of the neck. The brush of his soft full lips sends tingles vibrating down your spine, seducing you so effortlessly.

“I always miss you.” He whispers against the warmth of your skin as he breathes in the sweet aroma of your hair, nuzzling his nose against the slope of your neck as he holds you close.

Will turns you in his arms to face him. Cupping your cheeks, he looks you square in the eye. “These jobs are gonna get us out of this dump. Get us that flat I always promised you. A place of our own where we can raise a family someday.”

Your heart flutters in your chest as you stare up into his eyes just inches apart.

“Babies,” You smile at the thought, grin spreading wide across your face. You’ve wanted his babies for years. For as long as you’ve known you wanted to be a mother. It was one of those empty dreams that had haunted you most when you thought you lost him forever… Regret you didn’t have his baby before he left, a little piece of him to keep after the war took him away. It was always your dream to have a family together, but you thought you lost all that with the war. Thought it had all been stolen away. But finally getting a second chance. Sometimes you can hardly believe it’s real.

“Yeah babies,” Will nods, smile growing on his lips to match yours. “As many as you wanna give me. All as beautiful and smart as their mother.” His thumb drags across your cheekbone as he gazes deep into your eyes as If you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Your belly clenches as you lean into him, capturing his sexy pout in your grip as you wrap your arms around him and pull him against you.

“We could practice.” You smirk against the brush of his lips. Eye brow arching suggestively as he glances down at you.

A slow chuckle easing off Will’s chest in amusement before he leans back in, reclaiming your mouth. His hand falling from your face to caress and palm the curve of your hips as you reach for his undershirt and start pushing it up his body.

 Will helps you tug it over his head before tossing it to the floor. His hands returning your body once again, skimming and caressing along your curves the way he knows leaves you weak for him. The fabric of your slip bunching in his hands as Will guides you back against the table. Your breath quickens with need for him, sparks igniting in your veins as Will trails kisses down the slope of your neck. Sucking and licking at your flesh tenderly as he hoists up on the edge of the table. The old table protests with the added weight and instantly the sound reminds you of the first night with Tommy and any of the others that followed it on this table.

Your heart constricts with a sudden wave of guilt, blinding and inescapable. Your wrapped in your husband’s arms as he kisses down your neck on the table he still doesn’t know you fucked his oldest pal on. Your heart starts pounding hard as you grow more overwhelmed by guilt and remorse by the second. Some days it’s so intense you can hardly stand yourself or the secrecy. Some days it’s hard to look in the mirror. You just want it to stop. Want it to go away. It’s over, you tell yourself. It’s over. 

You repeat the words like a mantra in your head as you grab for Will, dragging him desperately back to your lips as you kiss him hard, trying to drown out the noise. Your mouth is insatiable, devouring him as your teeth clash, tongues pressing, pulling at the longer strands of his hair - Needing him to fuck Tommy out of your memory. Fuck him out of you completely, once and for all. Until only the two of you remain.

Will gives you exactly what you demand, his kiss smothering against your mouth as he grips the back of your head, holding you desperately close. The taste of his tongue, the grip of hands, they quiet the taunting in the back of your mind as you lose yourself in him. Tugging frantically at the buttons of his trousers, your fingers can’t seem to work fast enough to keep up with your need. Shoving them down his hips, you yank up your slip, squirming against the table top as you pull it past your butt. Urgency races through your veins as your lips trail frantically down his neck and onto the lines of his chest.

You let your mouth fill with the taste of Will, only Will, as you feel his body respond in kind, his breath deepening under your assault, muscles flexing and tightening. You feel his hand grip your cheek as you shove yours down the front of his boxers. Taking ahold of him, you begin to steadily stroke along his hardened length. The sound of Will groaning under your touch leaves your breath trembling with need, your belly coiling tighter. Nothing turns you on more than knowing he wants you. Knowing your touch drives him mad. 

But then his head comes down against yours as his hand takes your wrist at the edge of his boxers, puling your hand free. Only then do you realize he’s been calling your name. You glance up and meet his haunting blue eyes, your breath rapid, heart pounding.

“Thought I lost you there.” Will whispers, the heat of his breath fluttering against your parted lips as his thumb drags across your cheek. “Where’d you go?”

You’ve fucked Will so many times you couldn’t even begin to place a number on it. Your bodies have touched just about every surface in this little rundown flat. And more than once you’ve lost yourself to a quick fuck, even in the most inopportune places. So you know it’s not your urgency he’s calling into question, it’s something deeper.

Will knows you. Better than anyone. Inside and out. And the look in his eyes tell you he sees what you’re trying so hard to hide. It’s a look he’s given you on more than one occasion lately. A look that terrifies you to your core. He may not understand what’s causing this, but he can see you’re running, hiding. Your heart tightens, you hate this! You hate lying, but you know you can’t tell him either. Not without you both losing everything.

“I hate it when you leave, is all.” You settle for a half truth. It’s not the whole truth, but it’s all you can give without shattering his heart.

You watch Will’s eyes soften and you can see he’s accepting your answer. He kisses you soft and full on the mouth, slipping the straps of your slip off the shoulders, letting the fabric fall and pool down below your breasts. His kiss is tender and full of love, reassuring you of things you can’t name, but still feel. Breaking the kiss, Will stares deep into your eyes as he tugs his boxers down his hips. When he kisses you again it’s needier, heavier and hungrier against your mouth, making your thighs clench as he leans you back against the tabletop surface.

“I’m gonna miss you too, babe.” He says against your lips. His gaze pulling at you as he grips at your hip and slides you down the table. Drawing your thighs against his hips as he drags his lips down along your jaw. Kissing and sucking on all the little places he knows makes tremble against him and whimper his name, begging for more.

Will’s lips travel down your clavicle, down between the valley of your breasts. His smoldering eyes glancing up at you as he lingers over one of your breasts for a breath, your heart pounding wildly in anticipation as you stare back at him, before his lips part and his warm wet mouth wraps around your nipple. You cry out as pleasure shoots through your body. Your back arching against his mouth, fisting at his hair as his tongue swirls around you, his lips sucking lightly. 

You feel Will’s hand slide up your inner thigh, his fingertips grazing teasingly at your heat, before he slips two fingers inside you, his thumb rubbing torturous circles against your sensitive bud. You think of nothing but Will as his fingers pump inside you, his lips sucking a little harder against you. And you can nearly convince yourself this table has no history, but the one you’ve made together.

“Please Will,” You whimper, short of breath, your body pleading to have him, all of him.

Will rests his cheek against the valley of your breasts, breathing heavily against your bare skin as your nails rake through his scalp and his fingers keep working deliciously within you. You can’t take much more of this and he knows it as his hand slips free. You cry out desperately, drunk with impatient need as he draws the tip against you, rubbing against your wet heat. 

Will hisses against your skin with the feel of you so wet and hungry for him. He draws his mouth back up your body, dragging his tongue against your tingling flesh, leaving hungry wet kisses in his wake. His forehead settles back down against yours, madness hinged in his ocean blues as he stares down at you, lining himself up with your entrance.

“I’ll be home before you can miss me.” Will whispers on a deep uneven breath, before he captures your lips and buries himself deep inside you.

* * *

You’re straightening up the place, getting it ready for when Will gets back tomorrow when you stumble upon a heavy truth. You’re tidying up the nightstand and must have shifted something wrong when you heard a clatter hit the floorboards. You look behind the old stand and find a small tin. The sight of it alone sinks your heart. You know what it is, what it holds before you ever retrieve it. 

Taking a slow seat on the edge of the bed, you blow out a heavy breath and open the lid. Biting down hard on your bottom lip, you’re faced with Will’s smoking kit. His tar, his tools, surely the pipe is lying somewhere around the bed as yet to be discovered by you.

You close the lid as you close your eyes. Heart sick with this turn of events. When Will first told you Tommy gave him something to help with the nightmares you were grateful, hopeful even. You were both so desperate, you would have tried anything, but then you realized what Tommy got your husband mixed up in… Opium. Will tried to reassure you it wasn’t a big deal. He only used it when the nights were bad. To keep you safe. And for that kind of reassurance, Will would’ve tried anything. After he struck you, Will couldn’t take the chance again. He couldn’t live with it. 

But it wasn’t nothing. You’ve heard the talk. A drug like that can swallow a man alive. You held your tongue at first, especially as it seemed to help, the night terrors subsided for a time, but they didn’t stop, and he didn’t either. And that’s when you realized it wasn’t just about the nightmares, Will was trying to numb all the unimaginable pain he endured and now feels helpless to cope with. That’s when you knew what happened to him over there wasn’t going to go away and that left you feeling like you were losing him all over again.

You begged Will to stop. Voiced your concerns. Promised you’d find another answer together and seeing the fear in your eyes, Will agreed. But you see now that wasn’t entirely true. And it meant you weren’t the only keeping secrets. You felt angry and hurt. Scared you would lose him to something worse than the war – an empty promise for peace.

Setting the tin back down on the nightstand, you stew over the fact that he lied to you. Even if it was the pot calling the kettle black. You needed him to explain himself when he came home. But he wasn’t home, he was out working a job for the man who dragged him into that mud.

And suddenly you found yourself angry with Tommy too. Wondering – not for the first time – if Tommy had given it to him to sabotage Will. You and Tommy still haven’t spoken since that day in the alley. It’s too hard to pretend there isn’t something forbidden between you. So he keeps his distance and so do you. Moving like ships in the night through the betting shop, sharing the same space, but never making contact. But you’re fairly certain he’s home tonight. Sending lesser men to do his dirty work. And suddenly you find yourself fired up over this man you love. This man who won’t leave your mind. Haunting you like a fucking ghost no matter how long you stay away.

Snatching up your coat, you charge out the door and into the night. A realm not safe for women in such twilight hours, when seedy men roam, but you trust you’re protected by an unspoken power. No one touches the wife of Will Darmody, Blinder come back from the dead. Let alone one most of Small Heath knows use to secretly keep Thomas Shelby warm nearly every night. It’d cost a man his life to touch you. Everyone knows that.

You storm to the home on Watery lane. Fired up and ready for Tommy to give you some damn answers. Your grateful when little Finn answers the door despite the late hour. Even more grateful when he tells you Tommy is up in his room. You thank him with a gentle smile and carry on in your pursuit.

Knocking on his door with impatience. “I know you’re in there, Tommy. Answer the door.”

He looks surprised to see you when he opens it, but you pay that no mind.

“I need to have a word with you.” You tell him, pushing past him in the doorway and moving into his bedroom.

When you enter his room, there’s fire in your belly. You want him to explain himself. Why he would do this to Will. What he hopes to achieve. But then you smell it in the air as Tommy closes the door behind you. Sweet and subtle, you could almost convince yourself it was a woman’s perfume, but you know better as you slowly turn to face him. 

Your eyes meet, his gaze expressionless and restrained, but your heart begins to crack and break as the scope of things take shape in your mind. Tommy didn’t give it to Will to spite him… He gave it to him because he’s using it too. Staring into his eyes, you’d nearly forgotten until that moment, Will wasn’t the only one broken and half dead from the war. You’d conveniently shut away everything Tommy told you he endured.

Determined to find it, to confirm your successions with your own eyes, your gaze rips from Tommy and scours the room. His sparse space, absent of most creature comforts and mementoes people traditionally wrap themselves in. As your gaze sweeps over it, you realize you’ve never actually been inside his room. Every indiscretion confined to the small flat you called your home. Where only your noisy neighbors could hear the salacious truth. Not somewhere any Shelby could gather word of. Spotting the stand by his bed, your gut tells you that’s where he’s keep it. Has to be, as you move hastily to it without invitation.

There’s a cluttered mess atop the stand and you’d expect nothing less. Tommy might be composed and well put together on the outside, as sharp as his tailored suits, but you’ve seen what lies beneath, it’s as chaotic and unhinged as the shit scattered across his nightstand. Your eyes scan over the items quickly, cigarette’s and whiskey, oil lamp and ashtray, matches and a near empty glass. Your eyes stop on a small box, but only hesitate a moment before lifting the lid and looking inside.

“Oi,” Tommy barks, taking the box from your hands, moving between you and the nightstand to get you away from his things.

“You said you needed a word. Say it.” He reminds you impatiently, his jaw as tight as the fire in his eyes.

Only a moment, you only had it open a moment before he snatched it out of your hands, but you saw all you needed to… The same black tar you caught Will with. Your heart sinks and belly tightens as you meet Tommy’s eyes. Feeling everything you know you shouldn’t feel begin to stir and come back to life within you.

“You’re smokin it too?” You ask him on a heavy breath.

The sadness in your eyes catches Tommy off guard. Not use to seeing you feel anything for him lately. But the sight of your pain instantly has him trying to minimize your concerns, trying to smolder your worries.

“Just to calm the nerves.” He explains casually, he and so many other war-torn soldiers searching for a little peace.

“The nerves,” You repeat, a sad pathetic laugh huffing off your chest as you nod to yourself in disbelief. Stepping back from him, you lean against the wall to steady yourself, your stomach wrapping you up in knots as your chest pulls suffocatingly tight.

“Both the men I love are coming apart at the seams and I am crumbling under the weight of trying to hold it all together.” You say to yourself on a hard shuttered breath, leaning your head back to push it hard against the wall in frustration. Feeling completely overwhelmed and powerless to help them, you slide down along the wall, buckling under the heavy and insurmountable weight upon your heart as you bury your face in your hands, unsure what to do or how to fix this.

Seeing you like this, crouched small and in pain along the wall of his bedroom, Tommy can’t stay away from you. And that’s what makes you so fucking dangerous to him. For a man who always strives for the utmost control, to always have the upper hand, you have this way of making him reckless and self-sacrificing. Making choices he knows aren’t in his best interest, but when it’s you, he can’t seem to make himself stop.

Tommy crouches in front of you, gently pulling your hands from your face, drawing your palms into his own as he lightly holds your hands.

“I’m not your concern, Addy. That’s why I walked away. So it wouldn’ be harder.” He speaks softly to you, only to you. Reserving what little tenderness he has left inside his broken heart for Finn, Ada on occasion… And the woman he loves.

You slide up along the wall to stand as Tommy follows your lead, pulling your hands from his as you go.

“But that doesn’t stop my heart from caring for you, Thomas…” You finally admit. Staring deep into his eyes as you say things no married woman should ever say or feel about a man who isn’t her husband. And you swore you wouldn’t. You swore you shut that door, but staring into his eyes, feeling the tenderness with which he comforts you, you find your walls starting to splinter and crack.

“Tell me we meant nothing. Tell me it was just for comfort. To kill the loneliness.” You practically beg him, your breath growing heavy with grief and a conflicted heart. Your hand pressing upon his chest, your nails curling and digging lightly at the fabric of his undershirt as you pleaded for the mercy of ignorance.

But Tommy can’t give you that, as he slowly shakes his head. “I’ve never lied to you, Addy.”

And there is it, terrifying enough to leave you trembling where you stand. You both know it now. Any silly little illusions you’ve held onto about promises to a best mate, finding comfort in the bleakest of hours, are dashed as the words are finally said aloud. Your little arrangement may have started out as such, but what it is now, is a far more deadly beast.

“He’s my husband.” You tell Tommy, staring deep into his eyes as tears fill your own. Begging him to relieve you of all this, set you free, even as you find yourself moving slowly toward him. As you find yourself inexplicable drawn to him once again.

“He’s been through hell and he needs me… I love him, Tommy.” You whisper, looking deep into his eyes, begging for relief before you rest your face gently against his chest seeking the comfort he brings. Wishing your words were enough to pull you away from Tommy and not draw you closer. Wishing those words could set you free.

Your lips brush against the cotton of Tommy’s faded white undershirt as he feels you breathe in deeply against him. He hates the way you love Will, even though he knows it’s the love between the both of you that’s the sin in all this.  But Tommy never cared much for sin, or even right and wrong, certainly not after the war, but he does want to do right by you. He does want to see you happy. And despite his blinding jealousy and lost friendship, Tommy wants to do the right thing for Will too. The childhood pal Tommy can still remember running wild and fearless through the streets of Small Heath with.

“Then you should be with him.” Tommy says, his words steadfast, as if it were that easy to drown the love he has for you. And it is, as long as he doesn’t listen to his heart.

“Tell me how to let you go. Tell me how to stop loving you.” You plead, with yourself as much as him. Heart heavy with each word as you fist at this undershirt in desperation. Nose buried deep against the ridge of his collarbone as you breathe him in as if he’s your final prayer and only hope.

Tommy’s arm wraps cautiously around your back, his other hand running comfortingly down the length of your hair. In the stillness of the night, he leans down, brushing his lips faintly against your forehead, before placing a tender kiss. Even though he knows he shouldn’t be touching you in this way. Even though he knows he has no right to.

“I wish I knew.” Tommy answers honestly, lips pressed against your skin.

His answer pulls at your heart. Echoing your own desperate plea as you first at his shirt trying to escape the inescapable. Your face leans back just enough to find his eyes, iridescent blue and mirroring every weakness inside you. Your heart races, chest tight as you stand against the precipice. 

Your fingertips trace along the razor-sharp edge of his jaw as you drag your tongue across your lips praying for salvation. But there’s no redemption here as you tilt your face up to reach him, his lips descending to meet you, and you realize you were damned the moment you walked into his room.

Your lips meet and it’s like fire and gun power, everything smothered and suppressed explodes between you. A simple kiss isn’t nearly enough to quench the thirst, as you bite as his lip, sucking the plump flesh inside your mouth as you drag your teeth across it, listening as Tommy groans in approval. You can’t fill yourself with the taste of him fast enough as your tongues press. 

You gladly tumble into the pits of hell as your arms wrap around his neck, pulling Tommy desperately to you. You feel his arms at the small of back, wrapping and pulling you flush into the curve of his body. The heat of him, the taste of his tongue as it strokes and seduces your own has your heart pounding so hard you swear it’ll beat right out your chest if you’re not careful.

It’s Tommy who breaks the kiss first, the heat of his mouth moving down your jaw, slipping toward your neck, nipping and sucking at your tender flesh. Your body’s on edge, sensitive to every brush of his lips, nick of his teeth, and the unrelenting rhythm of his hot breathe against you. As Tommy’s mouth rounds the ridge of your collarbone, your eyes roll back. His face buries against your breasts, the heat of his breath seeping through the fabric of your dress as your fingers bury and tug impatiently at his hair. 

You knew you missed him. A fact you could never deny no matter how hard to tried, but you had no idea how painfully much until your body welcomed him against you once again. Feeling Tommy move lower, your eyes shoot open and watch as he gets down on his knees against the floorboards. Breathing hard against your belly, Tommy’s breath pushing through the fabric as your stomach muscles clench against the heat.

You can’t help but look down at him in wonder. Thomas fucking Shelby down on his knees before you, gazing up you at you like your everything to him, the whole goddamn world. Everyone here is afraid of him, terrified of what he can do. And you’ve got the most feared man in Small Heath down on his knees before you, his hand sliding up your thigh as the other pushes the fabric of your dress up around your waist. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen anything so arousing, so fucking powerful, but you never get the chance to answer the question before Tommy breaks from your gaze and you feel his mouth against you through your knickers.

You gasp sharply, your head falls back against the wall as your knees nearly buckle and collapse on him. You grip his dresser for support, terrified the strength of your legs will betray you as Tommy slowly drags his tongue against you. The friction is delicious and torturous through the fabric of your panties and Tommy knows it as he drags out the moment, using the texture of the silk and the wet heat of his mouth against you in the most savage of ways. When he feels he’s teased you enough, Tommy begins to pull your knickers down your trembling legs. Bracing his shoulder, you try not to trip and fall as Tommy yanks the silk past your ankles. 

You barely have time to regain your balance before his mouth is back on your heat. Licking and sucking at your most sensitive spots, you grip wildly at his hair as you come completely undone, struggling just to stand. Pushing your legs wider apart, Tommy’s tongue strokes and delves deeper against you as your hips flex against him begging for more. He has your body begging for release in minutes… and he knows it. And like every other time before when Tommy melts you with his mouth, it doesn’t take long before you’re close to the edge, begging for release just to ease the coiled tension so tight inside you from the stroke of his tongue. Your eyes roll back as you fist his hair, ecstasy humming through your body, ready to fire at any moment.  

“Tommy,” you cry out wantonly, begging for the relief only he can give you.

And Tommy knows it, he knows he has all the power over you in this moment. He may be on his knees, but you’re putty in his hands as you beg him to give you the relief your body needs. And in that moment, he knows you’re his, more his than anyone one else’s and Tommy can’t resist showing you just how much you still need him. Flicking his tongue against your sensitive bud, sucking you into his mouth as he pushes his fingers inside you - Tommy grants you mercy as your legs nearly collapse around him. 

Needing to be the best you’ve ever had, the best you will ever have, Tommy keeps going as you cry out, the sound of your ecstasy by his hand leaving his trousers unbearablely tight. Pushing your hip against the wall with his free hand, Tommy keeps you on your feet as he gets drunk off the feel of you trembling and shaking against his mouth and fingers.  Telling him everything he needs to know… You might go home to Will, but a part of you will always belong to him. He doesn’t even care if whole house hears you gasping out his name as long you remember the sound of it slipping desperately off your breath as you climax against his mouth.

Only after you stop trembling and your body stills, does Tommy slowly pull away. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he leans back on his heels and meets your gaze. Trying to catch your breath, you stare down desperately into the deepest most cavernous eyes you’ve ever known as Tommy slowly rises back on his feet. A sexy smirk curling at the corner of his mouth as he watches you, reaching for your face. Instantly you’re reminded of how wicked Tommy can be. How could you forget, he has to be the best. That gleam in his eyes tells you Tommy wants to remind you just what you’re missing.

Running his hand down along your jaw, Tommy’s thumb pulls at the plump bottom lip you’ve been biting at, toying with the fullness of it before he leans in slowly to capture your mouth. Tommy sucks your bottom lip into his, running his tongue along it coaxing and seducing you, before your lips part and your tongues meet. He fills your mouth with the taste of you – sweet and seedy against your palate – as his tongue seeks you out, stroking against yours. Tommy needs to take you higher than anyone else ever could, and not just anyone… Higher than Will. He knows he can’t profess his love for you for the world to see, but he can make your body do things only he’s capable of eliciting. Things that make it known a part of you is still his.

You feel frantic to touch him, feel him drag against your body and make you feel alive all over again, as you yank his cotton undershirt shirt up and off his body. Reveling in the feel of his flesh beneath your palms once again as your heart races for more. And you have no doubts Tommy is feeling the same urgency as he starts to gather up your dress, pulling it over your head in haste. You can’t work free the buttons of his trousers fast enough as your hands tremble and shake with unrequited need. 

This is madness in the purest sense, a fucking grenade to your marriage, but you can’t stop. You both know what you want - what you need, as you shove Tommy trousers down off his hips. He shouldn’t have this kind of power over you, you know that. Shouldn’t be able to make you reckless and frenzied from the stroke of his mouth against your body in places he should have never been. But he does. Fuck - He does.

Pulling you close, Tommy breathes you in, his mouth firm and hungry as it places haphazard kisses anywhere he can claim while pushing his leg between the heat of your still trembling thighs. Your pulse is racing, you can hardly breath your moving so fast, but none of that matters as Tommy grips under your knee, yanking your thigh up against his side before he buries himself inside you. You moan hard against his open mouth in surprise, losing all sense of yourself as with the feel of him full inside you once again. 

This man you love buried deep within you, as if he’s always been a part of you, some missing piece that just locked back into place. You wrap your arms around his neck, following Tommy’s lead, holding on tightly, needing him just as badly he needs you, as his hands slide across your butt and grip tight, hoisting you up against him.  Reigniting that dangerous part of you that yearns for him, calls for him, even when it shouldn’t, as if you can’t ever get enough.

You breathe Tommy in like he’s the key to your salvation, wrapping your legs around his hips to hold on tight as he pushes you hard against the old plaster wall. Pinning you to the unforgiving surface, the wallpaper pressing and imprinting upon your bare shoulders as Tommy thrusts into you deeply, his hips rocking over and over again into the warmth of your body, overwhelming you with pleasure. Right and wrong, sinner - saint, all those earthly confines fall away when your wrapped in Tommy arms, when he’s buried inside you. You can’t think, you can hardly breath as you lose yourself in him. Your legs trembling as you squeeze him tightly, his muscles flexing as they work to keep your steady in his arms.

The endless hours you spent alone together before Will came home, discovering one another, Tommy surveyed and mapped out your body and now he knows every subtle weakness, every hidden gem. Every way to make you tremble and cry out against him, drunk off the guilty pleasure he drowns you in. Your head pushes back against the unforgiving wall as Tommy’s mouth ravages down your neck, worshipping you.

“That feel good?” Tommy asks, his breath strangled and heavy against your skin as he snaps his hips against you.

“Yes,” You cry out, short of breath.

You listen as a frustrated groan vibrates against the ridge of your collarbone, your slip caught in his way, before Tommy rips the strap off your shoulder, tearing the fabric in his impatience. But Tommy doesn’t even seem to notice as he buries his face in the seam of your torn slip, kissing and sucking at the tops of your breasts as he tells you how good you feel. His praises sending jolts of fire racing through you with every frantic snap of his hips. 

You hold onto Tommy like he’s all you have, you can’t move, and the closeness only drives you more insane, amplifying all your senses as he pins you to the wall with his body. Using the surface as leverage as he thrusts faster within you, gripping your butt tight as he rocks you back and forth in tandem with his rhythm. Crushed against the wall, you feel the strong lean muscles of Tommy body flex and contract tightly against you, as he fucks you as if he’s always been a part of you and he needs you to remember that now. 

Tommy’s breathing grows heavier as he presses hard against your sensitive bud with every rock of his hips, pressing deeply to places inside he knows makes your shatter and shake. Not a breath to spare between the press of your bodies, you desperately cry out his name against the shell of his ear, pushing him to feel more, give you more.

You feel your climax coming at you furious and quick as Tommy picks up the speed. “Did you miss me?” Tommy’s asks, his deep gritty breath heavy and uneven against your ear. 

Pleasure races through your veins as quickly as the thumping of your pulse as you nod trying to answer him. It’s been too long. Your heart and body agonizing over his absence and unfulfilled need.

“Say it,” Tommy demands, needing you to hear it off your own lips as badly as he does, as he thrusts maddeningly into you, pushing deeper than ever before, knowing you can’t hold on much longer.

“I missed you.” You cry out. He feels so damn good, you don’t want it to be over this quickly, but you know you’re losing that battle as your muscles start to tense and twitch. Tommy’s mouth slams hard against your own with your admission, his hips snapping frantically as he drives you to the edge. Knowing he’s close, listening and feeling as Tommy unravels lost in the depths of you, knowing he wants you that badly, you can’t take it any longer.  

You lose control, lost on his lips with the feel of him deep inside you. You come hard around Tommy, harder than even his tongue delivered, your body shuddering, clinging desperately to him as ecstasy crashes over you like a drowning wave. Racing like fire through your veins as it sends you shooting up to the heavens and then drags your back down below the sea in rolling waves of euphoria. It sends his name crying desperately against his lips as Tommy watches you come, absolutely fixated and aroused by the power he gets from reducing you to this. 

Knowing only he can make you shatter so hard. Tommy bucks harder, his pace growing uneven as he tries to ride you through the high without getting pulled under by the heat of it himself. You’re still drunk off the him when Tommy’s thrusts become erratic, demanding, and suddenly he’s grunting your name off his lips like he’s still a praying man, as he shoves his face into the sweat glistened skin of your neck.

Tommy’s chest presses hard against you as he releases inside you, his arms trembling, his breath heavy against your neck, matching the desperate deep rhythm of your own as you try to catch it. You’re lost in the bliss of having him completely around you, flush against you as you run your fingers through his hair, kissing him softly against the shorn side. 

Tommy’s arms shake from strain, but you can tell he doesn’t want to let you go as you feel his lips brush against your neck, leaving a scattering of kisses in between the pant of his breath. But eventually he’s forced to as Tommy bends down slowly, setting your toes back on the ground as he pulls out.

Your legs shake unsteadily as you lean against the wall, pushing down your slip as you watch Tommy refasten his trousers. He glances up at you and there’s a suspension heavy in the depths of his penetrating gaze. Waiting. Holding his breath to see what you’ll do next. Whether you’ll bolt and run away from him now that the fire has subsided and the truth of what you’ve done, the line you’ve crossed settles in around you both. You can feel your heart beating, you’ve got two choices - hastily redress and dash out of here in a rush of shame. Or, acknowledge you still love this man, and staying away from him never changed that. 

Staring into Tommy’s hypnotic blue eyes, feeling your heart beat heavy in your chest, you don’t want to run tonight. Maybe that makes you a sinner, a damned and unforgivable soul, but you’ve missed him so much. Reaching out, your palm rests against the sharp ridges of Tommy’s face. Your breath quickening as you watch his eyes close in relief you aren’t rejecting him, as he presses his cheek deeper into your palm. Your thumb strokes him tenderly, speaking for your heart, before it slowly pulls away.

Moving from him and over toward his bed, you feel Tommy’s gaze heavy upon your back before you slowly turn to face him. Your eyes meet as you reach for the remaining strap of your slip, not torn by his frenzy. Your breath holds for a heartbeat as you stare into his eyes - You’ve already committed unspeakable acts, there’s no way back now – as you slip the strap off your shoulder and let the thin cotton slip fall from your body, leaving your naked and bare before him.

You watch Tommy’s eyes sweep the length of your body before returning to your own, heavy breath falling from his lips. “Fuck…”

Your heart races, no turning back now, but that’s not what scares you, it’s the fact that you still want him, that you’re willing to risk everything to have him be yours just a little while longer.

“Come ‘ere.” You beckon, reaching out your hand for his. 

Holding the grip of his gaze as Tommy takes your hand and lets your draw him near. He leans in to capture you in a kiss, but you evade his lips as you bring your own down upon his chest, kissing at his warm flesh and taut muscles, soft and slow. His hand weaving and fisting at your hair as you make a trail down his body, feeling his abs tense and flex beneath the brush of your tongue and the hold of your lips. Feeling his belly clench and expand as he breathes heavily against your affections. You take a seat on the edge of the bed and unbuttoning his trousers once more.

Tugging them slowly off his hips and down past his thighs, you breathe hard against Tommy’s clenched stomach, running your lips against the hair that trails down his navel as you take him into your hand. Tommy lets out a sharp breath as your grip tightens and you begin to pump the length of him slowly at first. He barely came just minutes ago, normally he’d need time to reload, but he hasn’t touched you months, all that need, all that pent-up desire has him coming back to life in your hand even after he’s already spent.

Pulling back from the warm flesh of his abdomen, you look up and find Tommy’s gaze already heavy upon you as you stroke him. You stare down the barrel of his magnetic blue eyes, not want to let go as you lean in and dragging your tongue along the tip of him.

Tommy hisses, his fingers digging into your hair as he holds your gaze. Madness filling his haunting eyes as you wrap your lips around him and draw him into the wet relief of your mouth.

Swirling your tongue around him before you take him deeper into your mouth, watching as Tommy’s eyes roll back, cursing as his hips jut forward pushing him deeper into your mouth. He tastes salty but sweet, the scent of his arousal still heavy upon him as you breathe in, bobbing along the length of him. Letting your mouth fill with him, your thighs clenching as the taste of Tommy spreads across your tongue.

Ragged breath heaving off his chest, Tommy can barely breathe, hardly think. Your mouth feels incredible wrapped around him, better than his greatest hit of opium, but it’s too much, too soon. He’s still spent, even if watching you drag your mouth along the length of him is one the sexiest things Tommy’s ever seen. He’d nearly forgotten how the sight of it made him so fucking weak.

Reaching for your face, Tommy pulls back, slipping from your mouth and hand as he guides you backwards, down onto his bed. He kisses your deeply, settling against the length of your body, between the warm wetness of your thighs as the feel of lying skin to skin sends a shock of electricity vibrating through you.

Hovering over you, barely inches apart, Tommy’s gazes down at you, his breath heavy on your lips as his hand runs tenderly along the edge of your face and down across your jaw.

“I love you, Addy.” Tommy says when he finally speaks. Palm gripping at your cheek as he stares desperately into your eyes, just a breath away, unable to hide it or deny it any longer.

You stare back into Tommy’s eyes, seeing the truth blinding back at you, but also seeing the slivers of fear that surface in his gaze with a confession so incendiary, so dangerous, so vulnerable. Far more vulnerable than Thomas Shelby allows himself to be with anyone. Leaving his heart out for you to take or crush.

So raw and bare before you, wrapped up in each other’s arms, pressed all tight, skin to skin, there’s no point in denying it any longer.

“I love you too, Tommy.” You whisper back to him, leaning up to brush the tip of your nose tenderly across his. Shattering any remaining illusion what you two shared had been purely about release and physical comfort. It stopped being such a simple arrangement long ago.

The words set him free. They’re everything he needs to hear as Tommy’s hand grips your cheek tighter, his mouth descending to kiss you hard against your mouth.

You spend the night lost in each other. Each act slower and less frantic than the one before it, until you find yourself straddled across his lap as he sits flush against you, the sun rising slowly across your back as you roll your hips lazily against the length of him. Your hands wound around his neck, lost along his scalp and in his hair as Tommy’s hands rest sprawled across your back, encouraging the rhythm of your body, the arch of your spine, as you savor the feel of him lost and buried deep within you. 

So deprived of sleep and lost in the haze of exhaustion, you stare deep into his eyes, noses brushing, breathing against each other’s parted lips as your hair hangs like a veil around you both. And you swear in that moment, you’re becoming one creature entirely as your orgasm slowly builds between your thighs. As you tease the flame of it, beckoning it like a friend standing off on the horizon, drawing it near, but never chasing after it, as you savor every second of having Tommy inside you.

But that’s all stolen away the moment the bedroom door swings open and Polly comes charging in. You tumble off Tommy, landing face first against his pillow as you yank the blankets around your naked body. Tommy tries to do the same as he remains seated, trying to shield you behind his back.

“Fuck safe Pol,” Tommy spits out, staring down his aunt as her narrowing gaze of judgement passes steeling between you both.

“I knew it was the two of you up here. Knew somethin was going on. Somethin wasn’t right.” She admonishes, as you fight the urge to hide and burying your face in shame against Tommy’s back as if it could make you disappear. The reality of what you’ve done finding you like a jolting slap across your face.

“You wanna give us a minute?” Tommy prompts like a question, but the tone of his voice makes it clear he isn’t asking. He wants her out.

Polly’s hardened eyes land squarely upon you. “Your husbands downstairs. You’d be wise to sneak out however you came before he figures out you’re here.” She says in disgust, anger lighting fires in her deep chestnut eyes as they sweep between the two of you before leaving as swiftly as she came.

The door is barely shut before you’re scrambling out of Tommy’s bed, frantically trying to find your clothes and redress. Whatever exhaustion taking over you moments ago is now lost as adrenaline surges through your veins.

Tommy follows suits, throwing his clothes on as quickly as he can manage. You hear him calling your name, but it barely registers as your thoughts flood with Will. Standing downstairs, oblivious to the fact that you spent the night with his best pal. It’s the kind of guilt that strangles you. That leaves your movements frantic and desperate, because if you stopped you’d be paralyzed by the grip of it. Making yourself as presentable as you can given your slip is torn and your hair is as wild and wooly as you feel, you charge for the door, but never make it before Tommy’s arms wrap around you, pulling you flush against him as he calls your name.

You hear it in the sound of his voice, desperation so unbecoming and foreign on his breath you can’t ignore it. Turning in his arms to face him, you see the hollowness in Tommy’s eyes, torn and ripped apart all over again as you run away from him.

“You don’t have to go back. You don’t have to choose him.” Tommy tells you, trying to hold onto you anyway he can.

And instantly you’re heart fractures deeper. You don’t want to hurt him anymore than you want to hurt Will. Everything feels utterly impossible in this moment as you gently touch his face.

“He’s my husband…” You tell him and instantly you watch as every self-loathing instinct inside Tommy surfaces in the hollows of his blue eyes.

“Tommy, I meant what I said last night, I love you.” You swear it, thumb stroking against his face, trying to banish the demons from his eyes.

“But what we just did here - to Will… It wasn’t right.” You say, your voice wavering as emotion takes ahold of you. Trying to make him see nothing is cut and dry here. As guilt strangles and gnaws at you for both the men you love. Impossibly trapped in a space that can’t fit the three of you and only keeps getting tighter. With no way out without hurting someone you love.

A sigh lifts off his breath, because Tommy can see he’s not going to win this argument. Even after everything that happened last night, your loyalty still falls with Will. And the part of him that hates who he is, understands why. There’s still a heart left in Will, whereas most days, Tommy feels like a dead man walking. You were the only thing that ever brought him back to life after the war, but he’s starting to see catching you is like catching the wind. Releasing you from his arms, Tommy nods to himself slowly, accepting his fate.

“Wait five minutes while I get ‘em out of here. Then sneak out the back.” He tells you before moving for the door.

“Tommy-“ You call to him before he goes. He glances back at you awaiting your word as you quickly remove the place between you and lean in against his lips, kissing him softly. You feel him run his hand down the side of your face, his breath waver against your lips as you pull away and in a moment, he’s gone.

You wait in Tommy’s room with no clock and a shaky sense of time. Counting the seconds off in your head, trying to determine five minutes as your heart races and tightens until you feel like you can hardly breathe. What are you doing? How did you end up here? When did you become this person? The questions rattle at the edge of your mind, accusing and self-demeaning as you try frantically to keep track of the seconds you count off.

When you feel you must have reached the allotted time, you sneak down the hall like a thief in the night, creeping toward the stairs. You can hear them carrying on about something you can’t quite make out. Something just beyond your reach. Their voices distant enough, you tell yourself to keep moving as you slowly creep down the steps. Your heart racing so loud it pounds in your ears. You’re halfway down the staircase when the plan fails miserably, and the group comes barging back into the betting shop. All four, laughing and hollering about something that went down last night as Tommy tries to draw them back.

“Addy?” Will’s voice instantly stops your feet before you can dart back up the stairs. The sound of his breath only leaves you feeling sicker as the conversation instantly stops and everyone spots you.

Your eyes meet Will’s instantly as you watch his gaze narrow in confusion. It’s barely dawn outside, the sun still lazily coming up over the row houses, and you can see in the hold of his gaze he’s more than a little surprised to see you here at this hour.

“Ey Addy, when’d you get ‘ere?” John’s voice drifts away in your mind, deafened by the look that washes over Will’s face as his eyes shift to Tommy and then back up to you on the stairs.

“Addy…” Will repeats slowly, and you open your mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. Your heart clenches, your stomach lurches as tears edge at your eyes. You can’t lie to him. Not again, not like this.  Not as you stare into his eyes and watch the truth take hold. Will’s gaze narrows into finely focused slits, and you have absolutely no doubt he knows you spent the night here, and with who, as his attention slowly shifts back to Tommy standing beside him, staring up at you.

You only have a second to feel the crushing weight of guilt and shame take hold of your heart and strip the air from your lungs completely. Strangling you in its unrelenting grip as your world slips out from underneath your feet. You watch from the stairs as Will tosses his cigarette to the floor, clenching his fist into a ball of vengeance, seconds before he sends it flying into Tommy’s face…


End file.
